Popeye 2: Well Blow Me Down! [ハードカバー]

Do yourself a big favor right off the bat: skip Donald Phelps' jargon-choked, muddy mess of a preamble and dive right into the strips themselves. If you read Volume 1, you pretty much know the drill anyway. In these daily and Sunday strips from 1931-32, Segar is still burnishing the character of Popeye while slowly starting to develop the sailor man's stable of supporting players. Wimpy makes his first appearance as a referee in a Sunday sequence featuring "sprize fighter" Popeye's bout with the man-mountain Tinearo, then gradually infiltrates the ranks of regular patrons at Rough House's Café (which also debuts here, along with its hirsute, gruff, opinionated manager) and wastes little time in firmly establishing his murmuring, hamburger-mooching persona. There are big doings "below the fold" as well, in the supplementary Sunday strip "Sappo"; after a long spell as a backyard inventor, John Sappo welcomes Prof. O.G. Wottasnozzle into his home, and wild flights of fancy are not long in arriving. (Reflecting Segar's love of outdoor sports, a number of these early gadgets and gizmos relate to making hunting and fishing easier... which, of course, they don't.) The highlight of the daily "Thimble Theatre" strip during this period is "The Great Rough-House War" (no, it has nothing to do with bad food) between worrywart King Blozo's Nazilia and "cowardly" Tonsylvania. This may be regarded as a sort of warm-up act for Segar's most ambitious and fondly remembered political parody, the "Dictator of Spinachovia" story of the mid-30s, but it holds up very well on its own. The silly struggle packages a strong pacifist message, no surprise given the tenor of the times. Before the war story, Popeye (with a surprisingly large amount of help from a pistol-packin' Olive Oyl) polishes off Western outlaw Glint Gore and his gang, then uses the reward money to open a "one-way bank" that offers free funds to the disbelieving, Depression-straitened citizenry. The latter story stings a little bit too much to be a real laugh-riot today, but those who contend that Popeye's world is completely oblivious of our own will have to contend with a strong counter-argument here. After boosting Blozo, Popeye then saves Olive from Bluto... sorry, force of habit... from the fate of a worked-to-death barroom dancer in "Skullyville, the Toughest Town in the World," another Western setting. Was Segar working out a personal fetish for sagebrush opi in doing the Skullyville story so soon after the Glint Gore epic?

With the debuts of Swee'Pea and (fatefully) Bluto to come in Volume 3, the spinach-powered momentum of Segar's wonderful strip is just beginning to kick in. Too bad that we'll have to wait a full year to enjoy the next batch.

Volume one featured the world's first introduction to Popeye. In this volume the character of Popeye continues to take shape. As the book progresses Castor Oyl slowly fades from the scene until Popeye and Olive are left standing as the undisputed centerpieces of Elzie Segar's Thimble Theater. Popeye's physical appearance improves significantly bringing him much closer to his traditional look particularly in his chin which looked kind of droopy in the first volume.

You can sense a bit of a moral dilemma on the part of Segar. On the one hand the humor of Popeye revolves around his violent nature and inhuman ability to take and deliver punishment. On the other hand Segar clearly wants to make Popeye a likable even admirable character. His solution seemed to be to always add at least a hint of obnoxiousness to everyone he punches so that one can make an argument that the recipient of Popeye's punishment had it coming to them. Although this means that Popeye's neighborhood (never referred to as Sweethaven as far as I've seen) is packed with men itching for a fight. Every once in awhile Popeye socks someone for no good reason like an American Indian who Popeye assumes might try and scalp him. In this case Olive Oyl acts as the voice of reason telling Popeye it's wrong to abuse American Indians. This also seems to be a way for Segar to let people know that he is aware that some of Popeye's actions are morally dubious. In this volume Popeye becomes an almost Mother Theresa type humanitarian, opening up a one-way bank using a $25,000 the reward he received. He ends up giving out money to the poor until he's left with nothing for himself. This seems to be a continuing theme with him repeatedly using money he earns to help out the poor. Popeye has also become a hero and protector of children and in one comic Popeye tries to help a small boy learn to fight. He does this by punching out random men walking down the street.

Volume 2 features some famous firsts. The first appearances of Wimpy and Roughhouse and the first time Popeye is shown powering up with spinach. It's difficult for me to express how much I loved these comics. Elzie Segar's Popeye is a surprisingly multidimensional character compared to his later incarnations. At one point, after a particularly harsh verbal barrage from Olive, Popeye slaps her to the ground. It's a shocking moment even more so because earlier in the book Popeye had financially assisted a woman who had been battered by her husband. When Olive scolds him for the slap Popeye replies, `I yam what I yam' but in that instant with his head held low he might as well have said, `I can't help what I yam'. Quite a difference from the cardboard hero he became as the years went by. Where else would you find a cartoon character wrestle with his own penchant for violence or later express such honest and heartfelt love for a girl?

Volume one was five star material but volume two is even better. I never would have expected a comic over seventy five years old to be this edgy and legitimately funny. It's also amazing how much Elzie Segar's drawings improve over a very short period of time. There is one strip in particular that had me laughing hard. Popeye has gotten himself involved in a war and, in one of his last appearances; Castor Oyl tells Popeye that King Blozo wants to see him immediately. Suddenly a cannonball flies up and smacks Popeye in the rear sending him sailing like a rag doll through the air, through a pole, through the castle wall landing him at the king's feet. Castor says something like, "It wasn't THAT urgent". The visual of Popeye sailing through the air is absolutely hilarious and the punch line was perfect

If you're reading this review you're likely debating whether you should get this book and if you're debating let me assure you, you should. The only downside is we have to wait until fall 2008 to get the next volume.

Popeye the Sailor, a mainstay of modern popular mythology, blasticates his way through another delectable volume. Morality doesn't know what hit it. The one-eyed squawking proto-Superman plot device who appeared in 1929 continues to bully his way to justice with dirigible forearms and pile driver fists. So much so that, sometime in 1931 the previous alpha male, Castor Oyl, unceremoniously vanishes. Sadly, many may not notice his absence. By the Skullyville adventure, about 70 pages in, Popeye has fully usurped the strip. Duo becomes solo. Olive Oyl, Castor's sister, fills the void and brings the strip to fruition. Her battles with Popeye's personality and Popeye's battles with himself give the strip a sniper focus and a razor edge. Popeye emerges as one of the most complicated characters to ever darken newsprint. He has a heart of gold. Most of the time. The rest of the time his convoluted ideas of justice result in much pummeling of innocents. On the first page, in a very un-PC strip, he wallops an Indian because "I read all about you swabs in story books and ya ain't goner scalop me - savvy?" Later, when he whacks another one Olive reprimands him. His only excuse: "I yam what I yam." He hits cows, again to Olive's chagrin. He accidentally mauls a stranger, apologizing afterwards that "I thought ya was somebody else." He promises repeatedly to Olive he'll give up fighting, only to use the situation to his advantage. Olive proudly kisses him, not seeing the well hidden and thoroughly trodden victims. He also spurns Olive's cooking to her abysmal heartbreak. To complicate things, Popeye gives $500,000 to a random poor child, rescues an orphan from abusive and refuses reward money, and befriends all the neighborhood children. A heartwarming contrast to the pulverizing vigilante. But the hardest, most unforgivable, strip to stomach occurs on April 14, 1932. Here he actually smacks Olive across the face.She later proves her fortitude by saving him from vultures. She only plays the helpless woman. She's anything but (as the 13 outlaws she shoots in the shoulder and throws in the cellar can attest to). This strip has depth.

And other surprises await: this volume finally eradicates the total vacuous absence of spinach from Volume One. Though Popeye already possesses Herculaen strength, spinach enables him to take on twenty men, which happens in the July 3rd, 1932 Sunday panel. Here spinach culminates as a Vitamin A coup d'état. The twenty fall like toothpicks in a typhoon of fists. Earlier that year, a heaping pile of spinach gives Popeye the boost he needs to flatten an unflattenable roughneck. After he plummets, people rush to Roughhouse's counter demanding a helping. In the final panel, Popeye tells mothers to "tell yer youngstirs I said they should eat spinach and vegetables on account of I wants 'em to be strong an' helthy - I will be a persnal fren of all chil'ren who eats what their maw says to eat." Popeye's sensitive side once again percolates. And, best of all, Mr. Wimpy appears in full splendor as the embodiment of pathetic manipulation and gluttony. Though the depression and hunger earn him some sympathy. It works on Popeye... sometimes. Wimpy also referees all Popeye's fights (which begs the question as to why he's so poor, but there you have it). His mantra "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today!" resonates through the Sunday strips (he doesn't appear in this volume's dailies). The appearances of spinach and Wimpy makes this an unforgettable read. Try not to keep turning the beach blanket sized pages.

Fans of volume one will find much to succor in this volume. E.C. Segar's brilliant amalgam of adventure, comedy, bizarre romance, melodrama, violence, and head scratching morality inexorably carries on. The tension rises, the strip focuses, and the sailor reigns undeterred (even against gorillas and robots). To claim this strip inspires philosophical reflection is no exagerration. It's no wonder Castor Oyl quietly stepped aside and let the steamroller sailor take the wheel. Not that he could have stopped him if he tried. Like unflinching Sisyphus, nothing stops Popeye. But Bluto will appear in volume three... I guess we'll see.