Popeye

Popeye the Sailor is a comic strip character, later featured in popular animated cartoons. more...

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He was created by Elzie Crisler Segar (who would sign some of his early Popeye comic strips with a cigar because it sounded the same as his name) and first appeared in the King Features comic strip Thimble Theater on January 17, 1929. Popeye quickly became the main focus of the strip, which was one of King Features' most popular strips during the 1930s. Thimble Theater, carried on after Segar's 1938 death by artists such as Bud Sagendorf, was renamed Popeye in the 1970s. Today drawn by Hy Eisman, Popeye continues to appear in first-run strips in Sunday papers (daily Popeye strips are reruns of older strips).

In 1933, Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios adapted the Thimble Theater characters into a series of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures. These cartoons proved to be among the most popular of the 1930s, and Popeye at one time rivaled Mickey Mouse for popularity among audiences. After Paramount assumed control of the Fleischer Studio in 1942, they continued producing the series until 1957. Later Popeye cartoons were produced for television from 1960 to 1962 by King Features, and from 1978 to 1982 and 1987 to 1988 by Hanna-Barbera Productions (now owned by Warner Brothers).

Fictional character biography

Popeye is an independent sailor (or "sailor man," as he puts it) with a unique way of speaking, muscular forearms with two (sometimes one) anchors tattooed on them, and an ever-present corncob pipe (which he toots like a steamship's whistle at times). His strange, humorous, and often supernatural adventures take him all over the world, and place him in conflict with enemies such as the Sea Hag and Bluto. Popeye also seems to like singing a song called "Popeye the Sailor Man."

The plot lines in the animated cartoons tended to be simpler. A villain, usually Bluto makes a move on Popeye's "sweetie", Olive Oyl. The bad guy then clobbers Popeye until Popeye eats spinach, which gives him superhuman strength. Spinach farmers in Crystal City, Texas were so grateful for this they erected a statue of Popeye in the town and credited him for saving the then-dying spinach industry.

Although Popeye is short, odd-looking, belligerent, and has only his left eye (although, if viewers have a keen eye, at times, he needs to rub his eyes to see correctly, and his second eye seems to open) many consider him a precursor to the superheroes who would eventually come to dominate the world of comic books. Some observers of popular culture point out that the fundamental character of Popeye, paralleling that of another 1930s icon, Superman, is very close to the traditional view of how the U.S. sees itself as a nation: possessing uncompromising moral standards and resorting to force when threatened, or when he "can't stands no more" bad behavior from an antagonist. This theory is directly reinforced in certain cartoons, when Popeye defeats his foe while a US patriotic song such as "The Stars and Stripes Forever" plays on the soundtrack. One of Popeye's catchphrases is "I yam what I yam, and that's all I yam," which may be seen as an expression of statesider individualism.

Read more at Wikipedia.org