Popeye

• 1. Introduction

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  Popeye the Sailor Man began as a hired hand who was supposed to leave the story. In 1938, the newspaper strip that carried him ran in 500 newspapers. Over 600 licensed Popeye products were on sale, and his creator, Elzie Crisler Segar, was earning $100,000 a year. How did a one-eyed sailor with a pipe and a jutting chin pull off that kind of takeover? Who was the real man behind him? Why does a can of spinach define him, when the strip's own creator used it sparingly? And how does a character from a newspaper strip end up in arcade games, cereal jingles, and horror films? The answers start in a small town in Illinois.

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• 2. The Man From Chester

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  In Chester, Illinois, a Polish-born laborer named Frank "Rocky" Fiegel had a reputation for getting into fights. The person believed to have inspired Popeye, he had a prominent chin, a sinewy physique, a pipe, and an agile skill for throwing punches. Some say he was a professional boxer.

  Fiegel also handed out candy and treats to the town's children, and one of those children was E. C. Segar. Segar remembered him when he created Popeye. One description calls Fiegel "just like the fictional spinach-loving mariner... a one-eyed, pipe-smoking curmudgeon with a jutting chin."

  Fiegel's parents, Bartłomiej and Anna H. Fiegiel, came from the area of the Greater Poland Voivodeship, which was then part of Prussia, and migrated to the United States. According to Popeye historian Michael Brooks, Segar regularly sent money to Fiegel. Fiegel died on the 24th of March 1947 and never married. His gravestone carries an engraving of Popeye.

  Chester put up a statue of Popeye in Segar's honor in 1977. In 2006 the town began the Popeye & Friends Character Trail, adding statues of other Thimble Theatre characters. Wimpy came first in 2006, followed by Olive Oyl, Swee'Pea and Eugene the Jeep in 2007, and Bluto in 2008. The most recent statue named in the record honors Oscar and was unveiled in 2022.

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• 3. A Strip Before Popeye

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  Thimble Theatre debuted in the New York Journal on the 19th of December 1919. The paper's owner, William Randolph Hearst, also owned King Features Syndicate, which sold the strip to other papers. Hearst commissioned several replacements for Midget Movies by Ed Wheelan, who had resigned from King Features, and Thimble Theatre was one of them.

  The first stars were Harold Hamgravy, quickly shortened to Ham Gravy, and his girlfriend Olive Oyl. He was a lanky, long-nosed slacker, and she was scrappy and headstrong. In the earliest weeks they acted out parodies of stage melodrama, which explains the strip's name. A character called Willie Wormwood, a parody of the stage villain, soon vanished. The strip settled into episodic gags about the dysfunctional romance of Ham and Olive.

  In mid-1922, Segar began telling stories that ran for months. By the end of 1923 the strip had become a comedy-adventure. Olive's brother Castor Oyl, ambitious but myopic and small, began as a minor figure and was arguably the protagonist by 1925. A Sunday edition began on the 25th of January 1925 in the New York American. By the end of the decade the strip appeared in over a dozen newspapers.

  On the 17th of January 1929, in the strip's tenth year, Popeye appeared as a minor character. Castor Oyl and Ham Gravy hired him to crew a ship to Dice Island. A casino there belonged to a crooked gambler named Fadewell. Castor hoped to break the bank using the unbeatable luck that came from stroking the head feathers of Bernice the Whiffle Hen.

  On the trip back, Jack Snork, an undercover stooge of Fadewell, shot Popeye fifteen times. Popeye survived by rubbing Bernice's head. When the adventure ended in June, he left the strip. Reader reaction brought him back after only five weeks. By the following year he had a larger role, and many more newspapers had taken up the strip.

  Olive was at first unimpressed by the sailor. In March 1930 she left Ham to become Popeye's girlfriend, and Ham exited as a regular weeks later. By the end of 1931 Castor had settled down as a detective, and he later bought a ranch out west. The strip was renamed Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye in 1931.

  J. Wellington Wimpy filled the gap Castor left behind. He was a soft-spoken, eloquent and cowardly mooch who would "gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." Wimpy was a fixture of the Sunday strip by late 1932 and became a full-time major character after reaching the daily strip in March 1933. In July 1933, Popeye received a foundling baby in the mail, adopted him, and named him Swee'Pea.

  The cast kept growing. The Sea Hag was a terrible pirate and the last witch on Earth. Eugene the Jeep was a yellow, vaguely doglike animal from Africa with magical powers. Poopdeck Pappy was Popeye's lecherous, scheming father, and Toar was an ageless, dim-witted caveman.

  Segar's strip ran very differently from the cartoons that followed. Stories often spanned months or even years, and the humor leaned on dialogue. King Blozo, Toar and Rough-House never appeared on screen. Segar signed some early Popeye strips with a cigar, because his last name is pronounced like the word cigar. Comics historian Brian Walker wrote: "Segar offered up a masterful blend of comedy, fantasy, satire and suspense in Thimble Theater Starring Popeye."

  The April 1937 issue of Fortune magazine polled adult comic strip readers about their favorites. Popeye finished second, behind only Little Orphan Annie.

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• 4. Spinach and Contradictions

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  By the end of 1929, superhuman strength was a regular fixture of Popeye's character. Segar introduced spinach in July 1931, and from 1932 the strip credited it as the source of that strength. In Segar's pages the power was permanent, and Popeye only occasionally ate extra spinach for a boost. The habit of eating a can whenever he needed superhuman strength belongs to Fleischer Studios' cartoons.

  Max Fleischer saw what Segar had used only as an occasional prop. In almost every cartoon, the sailor lands in a hopeless situation, usually after taking a beating. A can of spinach then turns up, Popeye swallows it, and he saves the day, often rescuing Olive Oyl. Spinach could also grant skills. In The Man on the Flying Trapeze it gave him acrobatic talent. That short is also the only appearance of Olive's mother, Nana.

  Popeye's story changes with the medium, and the character is full of purposeful contradictions. He seems to have no manners and little education. Yet he comes up with solutions that elude the police and the scientific community. He has shown Sherlock Holmes-like investigative skill, scientific ingenuity and successful diplomatic arguments.

  In the animated cartoons, his pipe becomes a multipurpose tool. It has served as a cutting torch, a jet engine, a propeller, a periscope, a musical instrument, and the whistle behind his trademark toot. He also eats spinach through it, sometimes sucking in the can along with the contents. Since the 1970s, he is seldom shown smoking tobacco at all.

  The cartoons supplied the love triangle among Popeye, Olive Oyl and Bluto, who is sometimes called Brutus. Bluto never stops scheming to claim Olive at Popeye's expense. In Segar's own strip, Bluto appeared in only one story arc. Popeye answers with near-saintly perseverance, overcoming every obstacle to please Olive.

  A web series, Popeye's Island Adventures, premiered on the official Popeye YouTube channel on the 2nd of December 2018. Produced by WildBrain Spark Studios, it aims at a younger, international audience. Popeye grows his own spinach, and a bosun's whistle replaces his corncob pipe. Bluto has lost his beard and tries to steal the spinach rather than the girlfriend. Olive is an inventor and engineer. No words are spoken, and every action is mimed.

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• 5. The Fleischer Years

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  In November 1932, King Features signed an agreement with Fleischer Studios to put Popeye and the other Thimble Theatre characters into cartoons released by Paramount Pictures. The first cartoon arrived in 1933, and Popeye stayed a staple of Paramount's schedule for nearly 25 years. Billy Costello was the original voice. Later performers copied it, among them Jack Mercer and even Mae Questel. By 1938, polls showed that the sailor was Hollywood's most popular cartoon character.

  Sammy Lerner composed "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man" in 1933 for the first Fleischer cartoon. It boasts that Popeye is "strong to the 'finich', 'cause I eats me spinach." The tune has been tied to the sailor ever since. In 1978, a Japanese group called Spinach Power released a disco version that sold 400,000 copies.

  In May 1942, Paramount Pictures took ownership of Fleischer Studios, fired the Fleischers and renamed the studio Famous Studios. The early Famous shorts were often built around World War II. Popeye fought Nazi Germans and Japanese soldiers, most notably in the 1942 short You're a Sap, Mr. Jap. The series switched to Technicolor in late 1943, starting with Her Honor the Mare. It ended in 1957 with Spooky Swabs, the last of 125 Famous shorts.

  In 1960, King Features commissioned a new batch of Popeye cartoons for television syndication. Al Brodax served as executive producer. The artwork was streamlined for television budgets, and 220 cartoons were made in only two years. In these, Bluto became Brutus, because King Features believed Paramount owned the name Bluto.

  On the 9th of September 1978, The All New Popeye Hour debuted on CBS, produced by Hanna-Barbera. It returned Popeye to his original costume and Brutus to the name Bluto, while following the content restrictions on violence. Mercer kept voicing the sailor until his death in 1984. Billy West later voiced Popeye in the 2004 special Popeye's Voyage: The Quest for Pappy. He called it "the hardest job I ever did, ever" and described the voice as "like a buzzsaw on your throat."

  The original theatrical shorts spent years out of reach. Turner Entertainment acquired them in 1986, and a long legal struggle with King Features kept most from official video release for more than 20 years. Warner Home Video announced a restored release in 2006. Three volumes covering the black-and-white cartoons from 1933 to 1943 came out in 2007 and 2008. In December 2018 a fourth volume added the first 14 color shorts.

  Children around the world have rewritten the theme song on playgrounds. They turn Popeye into an "Anti-Popeye" and replace his spinach diet with worms, onions, flies, tortillas and snot.

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• 6. Selling the Sailor

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  Popeye the Sailor began a thrice-weekly radio run on the 10th of September 1935, broadcast on the NBC Red Network. The sponsor was Wheatena, a whole-wheat breakfast cereal, which routinely replaced the spinach references. Wheatena paid King Features $1,200 per week. Announcer Kelvin Keech sang a new set of words to Lerner's theme, beginning "Wheatena is his diet."

  A second series ran on WABC from the 31st of August 1936, with Floyd Buckley as Popeye. Spinach was again absent, and Popeye sang, "Wheatena's me diet, I ax ya to try it." A third series, sponsored by the maker of Popsicles, aired on CBS from the 2nd of May 1938. Of the 204 radio episodes across the three series, only 20 are known to survive.

  Merchandise followed from early on, from soap to razor blades to spinach. In 1957, Mattel released a Popeye spinach can with a trigger that reveals the sailor's head with a squeak. In 1989 and 1990, Popeye endorsed Instant Quaker Oatmeal with the tagline "Can the spinach, I wants me Quaker Oatmeal!" The Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, objected to the sailor's aggression and Olive Oyl's submissiveness.

  Candy cigarettes were one product. World Candies made them with red dye at the tip to mimic embers. The company now sells them as Popeye Candy Sticks, without the dye.

  The restaurant world borrowed the names in odd ways. The Wimpy chain took its name from the hamburger-loving mooch and became one of the first international fast food restaurants. The chicken chain Popeyes, founded on the 12th of June 1972, was not named after the sailor. Its name came from Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, a fictional detective in the 1971 film The French Connection. Popeye references still appeared in some of its early commercials under a licensing deal with King Features.

  A video game became one of the sailor's unexpected legacies. Shigeru Miyamoto originally conceived Donkey Kong as a Popeye game. When Donkey Kong became a big success, King Features agreed to license the characters to Nintendo for a Popeye arcade game in 1982. The goal was to avoid Brutus and the Sea Hag while collecting items that Olive Oyl produced.

  In 2002, TV Guide ranked Popeye number 20 on its "50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time" list. Two decades earlier, director Robert Altman had made Popeye (1980), the first film centered on the character, with Robin Williams in the title role. Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions co-produced the live-action musical. It earned double its budget at the U.S. box office, and critics who first panned it have warmed to it over the years. The set in Mellieħa, on the northwest coast of Malta, is now a tourist attraction called Popeye Village.

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• 7. Hands After Segar

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  Segar's final Thimble Theatre strip appeared on the 2nd of October 1938, after an illness. Tom Sims, the son of a Coosa River channel-boat captain, began writing the strip in August 1938 and established the spin-off Popeye the Sailorman. Doc Winner, who had filled in for Segar between January and May 1938, first drew for Sims. Bela Zaboly succeeded him by December 1939. In 1954, Ralph Stein took over the daily strip's writing. Both daily and Sunday strips passed to Bud Sagendorf in 1959.

  Sagendorf had been Segar's assistant. He wrote and drew the daily strip until 1986 and the Sunday strip until his death in 1994. He tried to keep Segar's classic style, though his art is instantly recognizable. Pacing set him apart. Where Segar's plots moved very fast, a week of Sagendorf's dailies could advance a story only a little. Charles M. Schulz said, "I think Popeye was a perfect comic strip, consistent in drawing and humor."

  Bobby London wrote and drew the daily strip from 1986 to 1992. He put Popeye and friends in updated situations while keeping the spirit of Segar. One classic storyline, "The Return of Bluto," showed the sailor battling every version of the bearded bully from the strip, comic books and animated films. After some controversy, London was fired for a story that could be taken to satirize abortion. The daily strip has run Sagendorf reprints ever since.

  Hy Eisman drew the Sunday strip from 1994 to 2022. R. K. Milholland took over after Eisman retired. Milholland had already contributed to Popeye's Cartoon Club, a webcomic King Features launched in January 2019 for the character's 90th year. Artists including Alex Hallatt, Erica Henderson, Tom Neely and Roger Langridge each drew a comic in their own style. At the end of the year, Milholland's Cartoon Club comic was named the number one comic of the year on King Features' Comics Kingdom website.

  In August 2022, a new twice-weekly webcomic called Olive & Popeye debuted. Milholland writes and draws the Thursday strips about Popeye and his extended family. The Tuesday strips follow Olive's own adventures. Shadia Amin drew them at first, and Emi Burdge replaced her in October 2023.

  Popeye's main comic book series ran continuously from 1948 to 1984 at Dell Comics, Gold Key Comics, King Comics and Charlton Comics. Sagendorf wrote and illustrated it at first, and Popeye became something of a crimefighter. His new villains included the Misermite dwarfs, who were all identical. In 1999, Peter David wrote the one-shot The Wedding of Popeye and Olive Oyl. It finally married the pair after decades of courtship. In 2012, IDW Publishing launched a 12-issue miniseries by Roger Langridge and others.

  Castor Oyl's former wife Cylinda, married to him from 1926 to 1928, had left the strip by the close of 1928. She reunited with Castor under Milholland's authorship almost a century later.

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• 8. Who Owns Popeye

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  According to a 1992 case in Japan, Popeye's copyright expired there in May 1990. In most countries, Segar's comic strips entered the public domain on the 1st of January 2009, seventy years after his death. The films, television shows and theme music based on them did not. In the United States the strips stayed protected, because pre-1978 works that followed all copyright formalities get 95 years from publication.

  On the 1st of January 2025, the Thimble Theatre strip that introduced Popeye entered the public domain in the United States. Observers believed that elements such as eating spinach for strength would stay protected. It turned out that the strips introducing spinach, Bluto and J. Wellington Wimpy did not have their copyrights renewed. King Features had renewed only the strip Popeye debuted in and one from 1930. All strips before the 4th of May 1933 were therefore in the public domain.

  King Features still holds trademarks on Popeye's name and image. Unlike copyright, a trademark does not expire as long as it stays in use, and King Features has used the Popeye trademark continuously since registering it in 1931.

  In 2025, as the character began becoming public domain in the United States, several live-action horror films reimagined him as a murderous antagonist. Popeye's Revenge, a British film directed by William Stead and produced by ITN Studios, reached U.S. video on demand on the 13th of February 2025 and Amazon Prime Video on the 19th of February. Popeye the Slayer Man, distributed by Vantage Media, followed on the 21st of March 2025. Its story follows friends who sneak into an abandoned spinach factory. Gravitas Ventures released the British horror comedy Shiver Me Timbers on the 1st of April 2025.

  The owners have their own plans. On the 19th of March 2024, King Features announced a new live-action Popeye film in development at Chernin Entertainment, with a screenplay by Michael Caleo.

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