Bud Sagendorf (Dailies) & Randy Milholland (Sundays)

About

Popeye

He\'s short, balding, ornery and downright ugly by anyone\'s standards. But countless numbers of fans have grown up admiring and identifying with this unpretentious hero since his introduction to the public in 1929. With one of his cartoons airing somewhere in the world nearly every minute of every day, Popeye remains one of the most widely recognized and best-loved personalities ever.

Popeye is an underdog with a long fuse and a keen sense of fair play. Everyone identifies with him when he finally says, \"Tha\'s all I can stands, and I can\'t stands no more!\" And it seems only fitting that our most unlikely hero would fall for the least likely of sex symbols: Olive Oyl. Flat as a board, with a pickle-shaped nose and fickle heart to match, Popeye\'s \"goil\" puts him through his paces. Her only real competition is spinach.

Popeye made his first public appearance Jan. 17, 1929, in Elzie Segar\'s then 10-year-old comic strip, Thimble Theatre, which originally revolved around Olive Oyl\'s family. Although he was introduced as a minor walk-on character, Popeye quickly \"muskled\" his way into the limelight and eclipsed the older characters to become the star of Thimble Theatre. With Popeye came a host of new, off-beat funny folks such as Swee\'Pea, the \"infink\" Popeye adopted; J. Wellington Wimpy, the world\'s most hamburger-obsessed moocher; and Brutus, the hairy \"heavy\" with the glass jaw.

Segar had a genius for creating strong, memorable characters the entire world knows and loves. \"Not even Walt Disney\'s Mickey Mouse or Warner Bros.\' Bugs Bunny can top Popeye in the high profile department ... (because) both the Rodent and the Wabbit have known long stretches of inactivity between film appearances ... (but) the monocular seafarer has seldom been caught without a new adventure in the works,\" wrote Michael H. Price of The New York Times News Service.

Popeye made the jump to the silver screen in a 1933 Betty Boop cartoon entitled, Popeye the Sailor from the Fleischer Studios. Nearly 600 Popeye cartoons were made and are still in worldwide syndication. Many are available on video. The Fleischer Popeye cartoons can be seen today on the The Cartoon Network.

In 1980, Paramount Pictures released a live-action musical motion picture in which Popeye was portrayed by Robin Williams and Olive Oyl played by Shelley Duvall. In 1993, Ted Turner\'s Cartoon Network celebrated the 60th anniversary of the sailorman\'s film debut with \"Popumentary,\" a series of six prime-time specials.

Known as Iron Arm in Italy, Karl Alfred in Sweden and Skipper Skraek or \"Terror of the Sea\" in Denmark, Popeye continues to appear in comic books published around the world.

Interestingly, Popeye\'s spinach obsession began in the Thimble Theatre strip but became an indispensable plot device in his later animated adventures. Spinach capital Crystal City, Texas, erected a statue in 1937 to honor E.C. Segar and Popeye for their influence on America\'s eating habits, making Popeye the first cartoon character ever immortalized in public sculpture. The spinach growers credited Popeye with a 33 percent increase in U.S. spinach consumption and saving the spinach industry in the 1930s!

Today the sailorman has made Popeye-brand canned spinach the No. 2 brand behind Del Monte and he has his own brand of fresh spinach and salads. He has also punched up supermarket sales of everything from Pepsi to popcorn, not to mention millions of T-shirts, caps, jackets, collectors\' watches. There\'s even an entirely new digital entertainment genre, the MultiPath Movie. In fact, Popeye was the first character to invade, in an important way, the toy and novelty field. From tin wind-up toys to puzzles and kazoo pipes, early Popeye novelty merchandise now carries staggering price tags in antique shops and flea markets.

And, speaking of collectibles, the U.S. Postal Service featured Popeye in its \"American Comic Classics\" collection of postage stamps issued to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the American comic strip.

Popeye continues to be one of the most widely recognized and beloved characters in the world. It\'s amazing what a little spinach can do!

Characters

Bluto

When it comes to great rivalries, Popeye and Bluto may have the greatest of all time. These two have dedicated their lives to competing against each other for the grandest prize of all, the affection of Miss Olive Oyl. But like death and taxes, the one thing you can always be sure of is Popeye will come out on top. You'd think that by now Bluto would have caught on to that "spinach" thing!

Popeye

He's strong to the finish 'cause he still eats his spinach, he's Popeye the Sailor Man. Known the world over for his bulging forearms and his ever-ready can of spinach, he may not be as cultured or refined as his girlfriend Olive Oyl would like him to be. But, as he puts it, "I yam what I yam," an honest, hardworking, quick-tempered but good-natured sailor. Treat him well and he's your best friend; double-cross him and you might just catch a spinach-powered right hook to the chops!

Swee'Pea

After being left on Popeye's doorstep, Swee'Pea went on to become the sailor's "adoptid infink." There have been lots of kids in the comic strips in the first 100 years, but there's never been another one like Swee'pea. But what else would you expect from a kid who's being raised by Popeye? He can talk and fight, but strangely enough, he can't walk yet. Hmmmm.

Wimpy

J. Wellington Wimpy, if you want to be formal about it. And although everyone calls him Wimpy, he's anything but when it comes to mooching especially from his best friend, Popeye. He's lazy, cowardly and selfish. In fact he's almost everything Popeye isn't. His catch phrase, "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today," has made him one of the many popular supporting characters to come out of this strip.

Olive Oyl

Perhaps the comics' most famous love affair. Popeye has proven his devotion to his lanky love - ever the damsel in distress - by battling the fiercest foes for more than seven decades! But somehow it never seems to be enough. Now that's dedication! Although Olive is equally smitten with her heroic sailor, she's still easily impressed by anyone who has more "edumacation and ettiket" than Popeye. Olive is the only remaining original "Thimble Theatre" character.

Author

Hy Eisman

Hy Eisman was born March 27, 1927, in Paterson, N.J. He began his career when he created a comic strip for his high school newspaper. After a brief stint in the military, Eisman worked as ghost artist for the popular Kerry Drake comic strip.

He soon turned his pen to the comic-book industry, drawing for various publishers of such titles as Nancy, The Munsters, Tom and Jerry and Little Lulu. Eisman's career as a cartoonist took off in 1967, when he started to draw Little Iodine. He really brought the adventures of the bratty, pony-tailed Iodine to life.

He left that strip in 1986 to chronicle the adventures of those two more-famous brats, The Katzenjammer Kids, the world's oldest continuing comic strip. In 1994, Eisman added another comic legend to his repertoire when he started drawing the Sunday Popeye strip, which stars Popeye, the salty sailor man, and his crew of lovable co-stars Olive Oyl, Swee' Pea, Wimpy and Bluto who were created by E.C. Segar for his comic strip Thimble Theatre in 1919. Popeye made his first appearance in 1929. He was an instant sensation who would go on to star in hundreds of cartoons, comic books, his own radio show and even a live-action feature film starring Robin Williams. King Features Syndicate distributes Popeye to newspapers worldwide.

Eisman received the Comic Book Humor Award from the National Cartoonists Society in 1975 and 1984.

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