Comments on: Alex Cox on the Timelessness of Popeye

By: Brad

Brad — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:05:41 +0000

My only conception of Popeye is from the cartoons and the Robin Williams movie, so yeah, the fact that it’s supposed to be a great strip is somewhat of a shock to me. I’ll have to pick one of these collections up.

By: T.

T. — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:42:28 +0000

Xypha, I’m not doubting the value of the hardcovers, its just that the price and size may deter the impulse kid purchaser using allowance money as well as the parent looking for something cheap and portable to buy for their kids. I think these hardcovers should exist for nostalgic old collectors like us and cheaper smaller paperbacks for kids and casual fans to get exposed as well

By: stealthwise

stealthwise — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 07:35:14 +0000

Was this due to my post in the thread on the Comm board? Probably just synchronicity, but yeah, after digging out an old Popeye book, I found myself shocked by an overwhelming (and I mean that literally) swell of reminiscence and nostalgia.

When I was in third grade, I became so enthralled with old Popeye reprints in my school library that I wanted to BE Popeye. I even tried spinach! On purpose!

Truly a milestone series that needs more attention, but I don’t blame anyone for not recognizing it, or even not knowing what it is. There’s been the recent reprint, but for the life of me, I can’t think of a single person I know in person that would be able to tell me what Thimble Theater was.

And you forgot to mention Alice the Goon!

By: XyphaP

XyphaP — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 04:16:13 +0000

The Popeye collection is actually a pretty good value. The recently released hardcover spans two years in dailies, and almost a year of Sundays. It’s not something you’d fit in your pocket (well, that would be funny), but it’s far from not being worth the money.

I can certainly see how other people would have to ask if the work’s worth reading through, though. As delightful as teh strip gets, the first twenty or thirty pages are so interminably slow moving. Each daily recaps the plot as much as move the story forward. Segar’s ability to wrap the backward and forward momentum around a gag shows stunning economy, but the strip doesn’t really get rolling until he drops the need for constant backtracking. After that, it’s as genius as everyone says.

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:09:16 +0000

Are there really people out there who wondered if Segar holds up today? I find that shocking.

I dunno, I personally am never surprised with people’s reactions to older works.

And Alex initially wrote a slightly different version of the above piece awhile back in direct response to people asking the question.

By: Mark Guttag

Mark Guttag — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:51:55 +0000

I used to pick up the Peanuts paperbacks at the book fairs held at my elementary school.

By: T.

T. — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:27:22 +0000

Greg, you are right on the money about the cheap collection thing. I discovered Peanuts the same way you did, plus those Peanuts paperbacks were marketed toward kids and put in catalogs given to parents. I also found many a dog-eared copy of a strip collection in public libraries when I was a kid.

By: Greg Hatcher

Greg Hatcher — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:31:00 +0000

Are there really people out there who wondered if Segar holds up today? I find that shocking.

I wish I found it so. But I strongly – VERY strongly – suspect that those people are thinking of the animated cartoons and assuming that the strip is the same.

I DO wish someone would release cheap collections of the strip meant for the casual reader, same as more modern strips like Garfield or the Far Side got paperback issues every couple of months. Those are actually great stealth weapons to get people interested in a strip. I first discovered Peanuts through those old Signet paperbacks rather than a newspaper. As lovely as Fantagraphics’ archival work is — and those books are wonderful, don’t get me wrong — I think they miss a bet by not putting out mass-market ‘greatest hits’ paperback editions as samplers, especially of the older stuff like Popeye or L’il Abner.

By: T.

T. — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:06:11 +0000

Are there really people out there who wondered if Segar holds up today? I find that shocking. I often wonder why there are no longer new attempts at Popeye cartoons being made. I think Popeye could be a hugely successful property again if they did a version that went right back to the source material rather than trying to be a rehash of the later, post-Fleischer, watered down cartoons. Counterintuitively, I think the best route for Popeye is not to superficially modernize him but to make a new cartoon about him actually set in the original Depression era. I think trying to modernize him sorts of makes him seem outdated and anachronistic, as odd as that sounds.