Happy Birthday, Popeye!

Did you know that Popeye is 83 years young?  That’s right—on January 17, 1929, Popeye made his first appearance in THIMBLE THEATRE, and changed the face of the funny pages forever.

Earlier this week, we celebrated our favorite spinach-guzzling pal’s birthday by launching a new official website at POPEYE.com!  There are lots of links to buy Popeye tee shirts and other merchandise, a cool timeline showing Popeye’s history up to the present day, and we’ve also built an official POPEYE Facebook page, where you can get updated about everything going on in the world of Popeye, Olive Oyl, Wimpy, Swee’Pea, and the rest of the gang.

What we thought would be most exciting about the new site to you folks here at DailyINK is that we’ve provided the entire run of the THIMBLE THEATRE storyline in which Popeye first appears!   That’s more than nine months and nearly 250 comic strips from the late 1920s!

If you’ve ever been curious about where Popeye came from—and those early THIMBLE THEATRE days, from before Popeye shook things up for the Oyl family—please take the time to poke your head in over there and take a look at the new site!  We hope you all enjoy it!

Here’s that first famous strip!  Happy Birthday, Popeye, you old salt!

Oh, and be sure to check Popeye on Sunday for something extra special….