{"id":31349,"date":"2025-01-17T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T09:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=31349"},"modified":"2025-01-16T19:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T19:13:10","slug":"popeye-the-e-c-segar-popeye-sundays-volume-4-sweapea-and-eugene-the-jeep-february-1936-october-1938","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2025\/01\/17\/popeye-the-e-c-segar-popeye-sundays-volume-4-sweapea-and-eugene-the-jeep-february-1936-october-1938\/","title":{"rendered":"Popeye: The E.C. Segar Popeye Sundays volume 4: Swea\u2019Pea and Eugene the Jeep (February 1936 – October 1938)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"
\nBy Elzie Crisler Segar<\/strong>, with Charles H. \u201cDoc\u201d Winner<\/strong>, Tom<\/strong>, Sims Kayla E. <\/strong>& various (Fantagraphics Books)
\nISBN: 979-8-8750-0001-0 (TPB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

This book includes Discriminatory Content<\/strong> produced in less enlightened times.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is more than one Popeye<\/strong>. If your first thought when you hear the name is the cheerful, indomitable swabby in full Naval whites always biffing a hulking great beardy-bloke and mainlining tinned spinach, that\u2019s okay. The Fleischer Studios and Famous Films animated features have a vivid brilliance and spontaneous energy of their own (even later, watered-down anodyne TV versions have some merit) and they are indeed all based on the grizzled, crusty, foul-mouthed, bulletproof, golden-hearted old swab who shambled his way into a fully cast and firmly established newspaper strip and would not leave. But they are really only the tip of an incredible iceberg of satire, slapstick, virtue, vice and mind-boggling adventure.<\/p>\n

Popeye<\/strong> first washed ashore on January 17th<\/sup> 1929: a casual extra in the Thimble Theatre<\/strong> comic feature. That unassuming newspaper strip had launched on 19th<\/sup> December 1919: one of many funnies parodying and burlesquing the era\u2019s silent movie serials. Its more successful forebears included C.W. Kahles\u2019 Hairbreadth Harry<\/strong> and Ed Wheelan\u2019s Midget Movies<\/strong>\/ Minute Movies<\/strong>… which Thimble Theatre<\/strong> replaced in William Randolph Hearst\u2019s papers.<\/p>\n

All these strips employed a repertory company of characters playing out generic adventures based on those expressive cinema antics. Thimble Theatre<\/strong>\u2019s cast included Nana<\/em> & Cole Oyl<\/em>; their gawky, excessively excitable daughter Olive<\/em>; diminutive-but-pushy son Castor<\/em> and Olive\u2019s sappy, would-be beau Horace Hamgravy<\/em>. The feature ticked along nicely for a decade, competent, unassuming and always entertaining, with Castor and Ham Gravy<\/em> (as he became) stumbling and tumbling through get-rich-quick schemes, frenzied, fear-free adventures and gag situations until September 10th<\/sup> 1928, when explorer uncle Lubry Kent Oyl<\/em> gave Castor a spoil from his latest exploration of Africa.<\/p>\n

It was the most fabulous of all birds – a hand-reared Whiffle Hen<\/em> – and was the start of something truly groundbreaking\u2026<\/p>\n

Whiffle Hens are troublesome, incredibly rare and possessed of fantastic powers, but after months of inspired hokum and slapstick shenanigans, Castor was inclined to keep Bernice<\/em> – for that was the hen\u2019s name – as a series of increasingly peculiar circumstances brought him into contention with ruthless Mr. Fadewell<\/em>, world\u2019s greatest gambler and king of gaming resort \u2018Dice Island\u2019<\/em>. Bernice clearly affected and inspired writer\/artist E.C. Segar, because his strip increasingly became a playground of frantic, compelling action and comedy during this period. When Castor and Ham discovered everybody wanted the Whiffle Hen because she could bestow infallible good luck, they sailed for Dice Island to win every penny from its lavish casinos. Big sister Olive wanted to come along, but the boys planned to leave her behind once their vessel was ready to sail. It was 16th <\/sup>January 1929\u2026<\/p>\n

The next day, in the 108th <\/sup>episode of that extended saga, a bluff, brusquely irascible, ignorant, itinerant and exceeding ugly one-eyed old sailor was hired by the pathetic pair to man the boat they had rented, and the world met one of the most iconic and memorable characters ever conceived. By sheer surly willpower, Popeye<\/strong> won readers\u2019 hearts and minds, his no-nonsense, rough grumbling simplicity and dubious appeal enchanting the public until, by tale\u2019s end, the walk-on had taken up residency. He would quickly make Thimble Theatre<\/strong> his own. The Sailor Man affably steamed onto the full-colour Sunday pages forming the meat of this curated collection.<\/p>\n

This paperback prize is the closing quartile of four books designed for swanky slipcases, comprehensively re-presenting Segar\u2019s entire Sunday canon. Spiffy as that sounds, the wondrous stories are also available in digital editions if you want to think of ecology or mitigate the age and frailty of your spinach-deprived \u201cmuskles\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

Son of a handyman, Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Chester, Illinois on 8th<\/sup> December 1894. His early life was filled with solid, earnest blue-collar jobs that typified his generation of cartoonists. Young Segar worked as a decorator\/house-painter, played drums to accompany vaudeville acts at the local theatre and when the town got a movie house played for the silent films. This allowed him to absorb staging, timing and narrative tricks from close observation of the screen, and these became his greatest assets as a cartoonist. Whilst working as a film projectionist, he decided to draw for his living, and tell his own stories. He was 18 years old.<\/p>\n

Like so many of that \u201ccan-do\u201d era, Segar studied art via mail order: in this case W.L. Evans\u2019 cartooning correspondence course out of Cleveland, Ohio – from where Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster would launch Superman<\/strong> upon the world. Segar gravitated to Chicago and was \u201cdiscovered\u201d by Richard F. Outcault (The Yellow Kid<\/strong>, Buster Brown<\/strong>), arguably the inventor of newspaper comics. Outcault introduced Segar around at the prestigious Chicago Herald<\/strong> and soon – although still wet behind the ears – Segar\u2019s first strip – Charley Chaplin\u2019s Comedy Capers<\/strong> – debuted on March 12th<\/sup> 1916. Two years later, Elzie married Myrtle Johnson and moved to Hearst\u2019s Chicago Evening American<\/strong> to create Looping the Loop<\/strong>. Managing Editor William Curley saw a big future for Segar and promptly packed the newlyweds off to the Manhattan headquarters of the mighty King Features Syndicate. Within a year Elzie was turning Thimble Theatre<\/strong> for The New York Journal<\/strong>. In 1924, Segar created a second daily strip. The 5:15<\/strong> was a surreal domestic comedy featuring weedy commuter\/would-be inventor John Sappo<\/em> and his formidable, indomitable wife Myrtle<\/em>…<\/p>\n

A born storyteller, Segar had from the start an advantage even his beloved cinema couldn\u2019t match. His brilliant ear for dialogue and accent shone out from admittedly rather average melodrama adventure plots, adding lustre to stories and gags he always felt he hadn\u2019t drawn well enough. After a decade or so – and just as cinema caught up with the introduction of \u201ctalkies\u201d – he finally discovered a character whose unique sound and individual vocalisations blended with a fantastic, enthralling nature to create a literal superstar…<\/p>\n

Incoherent, ignorant, plug-ugly and stingingly sarcastic, Popeye<\/strong> shambled on stage midway through \u2018Dice Island\u2019 <\/em>and once his very minor bit part played out, simply refused to leave. Within a year he was a regular. As circulation skyrocketed, he became the star. In the less than 10 years Segar worked with his iconic matelot (from January 1929 until the artist\u2019s untimely death on 13th<\/sup> October 1938), the auteur built an incredible metaworld of fabulous lands and lost locales, where unique characters undertook fantastic voyages, spawned or overcame astounding scenarios and experienced big, unforgettable thrills as well as the small human dramas we\u2019re all subject to. They also threw punches at the drop of a hat\u2026<\/p>\n

This was a serial saga simultaneously extraordinary and mundane, which could be hilarious or terrifying at the same time. For every trip to the rip-roaring Wild West, idyllic atoll or fabulous lost kingdom, there was a sordid brawl between squabbling neighbours, spats between friends or disagreements between sweethearts – any and all usually settled with mightily-swung fists and a sarcastic aside.<\/p>\n

Popeye was the first Superman of comics and its ultimate working-class hero, but he was not a comfortable one to idolise. A brutish lout who thought with his fists, lacking respect for authority, he was uneducated, short-tempered and – whenever \u201chot termaters\u201d batted their eyelashes (or thereabouts) at him – painfully fickle. He was also a worrisome gambling troublemaker who wasn\u2019t welcome in polite society\u2026 and wouldn\u2019t want to be. However, the mighty marine marvel might be raw and rough-hewn, but he was always fair and practical, with an innate, unshakable sense of what\u2019s right and what\u2019s not: a joker who wants kids to be themselves – but not necessarily \u201cgood\u201d – and a guy who took no guff from anybody. Of course, as his popularity grew, he somewhat mellowed. Always ready to defend the weak and with absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows, he was and will always be \u201cthe best of us\u201d\u2026 but the shocking sense of unpredictability, danger and anarchy he initially provided was sorely missed by 1936 – so Segar brought it back again…<\/p>\n

This concluding compilation of Segar\u2019s Sunday comics masterpiece spans February 23rd<\/sup> 1936 to October 2nd<\/sup> 1938, with the classic pages and vintage views preceded by another sublimely whimsical cartoon deconstruction, demystification and appreciation. \u2018\u201cGift from Uncle Ben\u201d – An Introduction by Kayla E\u2019<\/em> finds creative director\/designer\/artist Kayla E. (Precious Rubbish<\/strong>, Now: The New Comics Anthology<\/strong>) anticipating and celebrating the legacy of the strip in a captivating \u201csilent\u201d cartoon yarn starring the cast and highlighting the incredible Jeep<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Throughout, the weekend wonderment accentuates arcane antics of the star attraction, but increasingly the support cast provide comedy gold via potential straight man Popeye\u2019s interactions with Wimpy, Olive Oyl, our eponymous co-stars and all the rest of Segar\u2019s cast of thousands (of idiots). The humorous antics – in sequences of one-off gags alternating with occasional extended sagas – see the Sailor Man fighting for every iota of attention whilst mournful mooching co-star Wimpy becomes increasingly more ingenious – not to say surreal – in his quest for free meals.<\/p>\n

An engaging Micawber-like coward, cad and conman, the insatiable J. Wellington Wimpy<\/em> debuted on May 3rd<\/sup> 1931 as an unnamed and decidedly partisan referee in one of Popeye\u2019s frequent boxing matches. The scurrilous but polite oaf obviously struck a chord and Segar gradually made him a fixture. Always hungry, keen to take bribes and a cunning coiner of immortal catchphrases like \u201cI would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today\u201d and \u201cLet\u2019s you and him fight\u201d – he was the perfect foil for a simple action hero and increasingly stole the entire show; just like anything else unless it was firmly nailed down…<\/p>\n

When not beating the stuffing out of his opponents or kissing pretty girls, Popeye pursued his flighty, vacillating and irresolute Olive with exceptional verve, if little success, but his life was always made more complicated whenever the unflappable, so-corruptible and adorably contemptible Wimpy made an appearance. He was even an occasional rival suitor, joining returning foils such as long-suffering local charmer Curly <\/em>as convenient competitors for Olive\u2019s dubious and flighty affections…<\/p>\n

Infinitely varying riffs on Olive\u2019s peculiar romantic notions or Wimpy\u2019s attempts to cadge food or money for food were irresistible to the adoring readership, but Segar wisely peppered the Sundays with longer episodic tales, and the weirdest cast in comics then or since. Foils like diner owner Rough House<\/em>, Alice the Goon<\/em> and ever-irascible Mr. George W. Geezil<\/em> perpetually vied for attention with baroque figures like subhuman pal Toar<\/em>, King Blozo of Spinachovia<\/em> and the vile Sea Hag<\/em>, but so many semi-regulars simply defy description.
\n\"\"
\nEugene the Jeep<\/em> debuted on March 20th<\/sup> 1936 in the daily strip: a fantastic 4th<\/sup> dimensional beast with incredible powers used by Olive and Wimpy to get very rich, very quickly. They soon lost it all betting on the wrong guy in another of Segar\u2019s classic and hilarious set-piece boxing matches between Popeye and yet another barely-human pugilist. The tales come from an astonishingly fertile period for the strip\u2019s long history. On August 4th<\/sup>, Eugene was instrumental in kicking off another groundbreaking and memorable sequence as the entire ensemble cast took off on a haunted ship to find Popeye\u2019s absentee dad. That memorably riotous tale introduced ancient, antisocial reprobate Poopdeck Pappy<\/em> and his diminutive hairy sidekick Pooky Jones<\/em>. The elder mariner was a rough, hard-bitten, grumpy brute quite prepared and even happy to cheat, steal or smack a woman around if she stepped out of line and a visual warning of what might be Popeye\u2019s eventual fate. Once the old goat was firmly established, Segar set Popeye & Olive the Herculean task of civilizing him; a task ongoing to this day…<\/p>\n

The full-colour Sunday pages in this volume span February 23rd<\/sup> 1936 to October 13th<\/sup> 1938, opening with uniquely sentimental monster Alice the Goon resurfacing, permanently switching allegiance and becoming nanny to rambunctious tyke Swee\u2019Pea<\/em> after saving the \u201cinfink\u201d from abduction by the sinister oceanic witch. Alice was a regular by the end of April. Her assimilation was part of a series of stand-alone gags revealing Popeye\u2019s violent courtship of Olive and tactics for deterring rivals, counterpointing a stream of pugilistic bouts and reinforcing the gastronomic war of wills between Wimpy and Rough House, with Geezil\u2019s hatred of the moocher also strongly represented week by week.
\n\"\"
\nAugust 9th<\/sup> saw the Jeep make his spectacular Sunday debut, with a few demonstrations of the fanciful beast\u2019s incredible powers to make money and cause chaos leading to infinitely varying riffs on Olive\u2019s peculiar romantic notions or Wimpy\u2019s attempts to cadge food or money (for food). These incidents were irresistible to the adoring readership, but Segar wisely peppered the Sundays with longer episodic tales, such as the saga of \u2018The Terrible Kid Mustard\u2019 <\/em>(December 27th<\/sup> 1936 – February 28th<\/sup> 1937) and pitting the \u201csprize-fighting\u201d Sea Salt against another boxer who was as ferociously fuelled by the incredible nourishing power of Spinach… an epic war of nerves that culminated in a ring bout adjudicated by Wimpy and remembered forever…<\/p>\n

Another extended endeavour starred the smallest addition to the cast and co-star of this volume. Rambunctious tyke Swee\u2019Pea was never an angel, and when he began stealing jam and framing Eugene (March 7th<\/sup> through 28th<\/sup>) the search for a culprit proved he was also precociously smart too. The impossible task of civilising Poopdeck Pappy also covered many months – with no appreciable or lasting effect – incorporating an outrageous sequence wherein the dastardly dotard becomes scandalously, catastrophically entangled in Popeye\u2019s mechanical automatic diaper-changing machine…<\/p>\n

On June 27th<\/sup> Wimpy found the closest thing to true love after meeting Olive\u2019s friend Waneeta<\/em>: a meek, retiring soul whose father owned 50,000 cows. His ardent pursuit filled many pages over following months, as did the latest scheme of his arch-nemesis Geezil, who bought a cafe\/diner with the sole intention of poisoning the constantly cadging conman. Although starring the same characters, Sunday and Daily strips ran separate storylines, offering Segar opportunities to utilise the same good idea in different ways. On September 19th<\/sup> 1937 he began a sequence wherein Swee\u2019Pea\u2019s mother comes back, seeking custody of the boy she had given away. The resultant tug-of-love tale ran to December 5th<\/sup>, displaying genuine warmth and angst amidst the wealth of hilarious stunts by both parties to convince the feisty nipper to pick his preferred parent…
\n\"\"
\nOn January 16th<\/sup> 1938, Popeye was approached by scientists who had stumbled upon an incipient Martian invasion. The evil extraterrestrials planned to pit their pet monster against a typical Earthman before committing to the assault, so the wily boffins believed grizzly old pug Popeye was our world\u2019s best bet…<\/p>\n

Readers had no idea that the feature\u2019s glory days were ending. Segar\u2019s advancing illness was affecting his output and between December 1937 and August 1938 many pages ran unsigned and were ghosted by Charles H. \u201cDoc\u201d Winner and Tom Sims. When Segar resumed drawing, the gags were funnier than ever (especially a short sequence where Pappy shaves his beard and dyes his hair to impersonate Popeye and woo Olive!), but tragically the long lead-in time necessary to create Sundays only left him time to finish 15 more pages.<\/p>\n

The last signed Segar strip was published on October 2nd<\/sup> 1938. He died eleven days later from leukaemia and liver disease.
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Popeye and the bizarre, surreally quotidian cast that welcomed and grew up around him are timeless icons of global culture who have grown far beyond their newspaper strip origins. Nevertheless, in one very true sense, with this marvellous yet painfully tragic final volume, the most creative period in the saga of the one true and only Sailor Man closes. His last strips were often augmented or even fully ghosted, but the intent is generally untrammelled, leaving an unparalleled testament to Segar\u2019s incontestable timeless, manic brilliance for us all to enjoy over and over again.<\/p>\n

Popeye<\/strong> is four years shy of his centenary and deserves that status as global icon. How many comics characters are still enjoying new adventures 96 years after their first? These volumes are a perfect way to celebrate the genius and mastery of E.C. Segar and his brilliantly flawed superman. These are tales you\u2019ll treasure all of your life and superb books you must not miss. There is more than one Popeye. Most of them are pretty good and some are truly excellent. Don\u2019t you think it\u2019s about time you sampled the original and very best?
\nPopeye volume 4: Swea\u2019Pea and Eugene the Jeep<\/strong> is copyright \u00a9 2024 King Features Syndicate, Inc.\/\u2122Hearst Holdings, Inc. This edition \u00a9 2024 Fantagraphics Books Inc. Segar comic strips provided by Bill Blackbeard and his San Francisco Academy of Comic Art. \u201cGift from Uncle Ben\u201d \u00a9 2024 Kayla E. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Elzie Crisler Segar, with Charles H. \u201cDoc\u201d Winner, Tom, Sims Kayla E. & various (Fantagraphics Books) ISBN: 979-8-8750-0001-0 (TPB\/Digital edition) This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. There is more than one Popeye. If your first thought when you hear the name is the cheerful, indomitable swabby in full Naval whites … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Popeye: The E.C. Segar Popeye Sundays volume 4: Swea\u2019Pea and Eugene the Jeep (February 1936 – October 1938)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[191,90,113,102,125,97,225,127,227,107,210,156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-cartooning-classics","category-comedy","category-fantasy","category-humour","category-kids-all-ages","category-mystery","category-nostalgia","category-popeye","category-science-fiction","category-sport","category-world-classics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-89D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31356,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31349\/revisions\/31356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}