I don't get it. English is not his native tongue? Then what is?

The author of this article demands a collection of Terry and the Pirates, but I just can't see that happening in today's culture. The few strips I've seen compiled in softback comic book form are incredibly racially insensitive. I mean, sure... put it in the context of the period and all that. But the wrong school library is going to buy this hypothetical collection of adventure comics and all hell will break loose.

Then again, the general perception of Popeye in 2006 is significantly watered down from these original appearances. So we may end up seeing the same reaction when some oversensitive parent catches wind that a beloved children's character is drinking and gambling.

This was a funny, but I think warm-hearted strip, mainly because Popeye was a good guy who never let the manipuations and the double-dealings around him turn him sour. He was an altruistic tough guy, and he always won out.

I'm not sure how familiar Wolk is with pre-Popeye Thimble Theatre, but there was more of an evolution than he recounts. Initially, the strip poked fun of melodrama (hence the title), and Olive Oyl and Ham Gravy (at the time using the name Harold Hamgravy) were the leading "actors" in the very first episode. The daily plots started to stretch to longer lenghths and Castor Oyl joined his sister. The device that we were watching a melodrama onstage was left behind.

Castor was an unrepentant con-artist, and he was pretty funny and utterly amoral. He's very much in line with the tough-minded comedy Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur were then writing for Broadway ( The Front Page, for instance) and that would dominate Hollywood in the thirties. He's very much in the tradition of Groucho and Mae West (her sly "you can be had" would fit very well in Castor's mouth, though without the double entendre). He tried to con blind beggers! But, of course, he never got away with anything. At this point, the strip had moved away from it's initial premise, though certain aspects (the melodramatic storylines, for instance) were to remain.

The pre-Popeye strips Wolk mentions are part of the storyline that brough the sailer in, and perhaps they are weak. But others, those collected in the book Popeye, published for the character's 60th anniversary, and a magnificient book called America's Great Comic-Strip Artists for instance, are pretty good. Castor was funny, both for his audacity, and because his schemes never worked out. . I do think it's worth pointing out the moral that the bad guys didn't win, and likewise no one would ever really "exploit" Popeye, because the sailor always came out on top. Segar wasn't a misanthrope like Al Capp.

Probably keeping the strip's origin in mind is imporant to consider when looking at the later ones. The melodrama was always there, the long tales of adventure constantly punctured by humor were a carryover from the strip's original intent. And those unbelievably long storylines are a marvel; one ran for 32 weeks.

By the way, spinach never played a part in the sailer's strength, not in the comics: that device belongs entirely to the Fleisher cartoon shorts which, though classics in their own right, have a very different mentality than Segar's comic strip.

I can't believe I left it out of my post, but you're right. Popeye is not an immigrant. His malapropisms reflect his lack of education, not his ethnic history.

I thought he talked that way just because that's the way salty old sailors talk, like the guy on the Simpsons...Yaarggh, and all that.

Popeye would've been a classic movie, if you could only make out what Robin Williams was saying. Maybe he was playing Popeye in his early immigrant days...

Keep in mind that, as the article writer points out, Popeye was a minor character introduced in a strip called Thimble Theatre who subsequently got his own strip, appeared in several different cartoon series(those old black and white Max Fleischer cartoons; the AAP color cartoons, and more recent made for tv stuff). Unlike a fully-conceived character in a novel, he has had several authors.

It's stated in the article that spinach was introduced by Fleischer, but Fleisher would also have had to decide on an accent for Popeye, and he went with a distinctly, if unspecific American one. It's probably the case that his curious way of talking, like his massive forearms, was originally a parody of immigrant sailors Segar had observed (the work built forearms), but in time the joke got lost.

I find it interesting that people are objecting to the possibility that Popeye is an immigrant – a status that was much more acceptable in the 1920s than it is today. Certainly today Popeye is seen as American as apple pie, but does that necessarily mean he can't also be an immigrant?

What was it? A Buick? It was a big ass SUV, I can tell you that. I had to wade thru a gigantic SUV ad just to not read this article.

Chris, while spinach is not the deus ex machina (what is Latin for can? or cylinder?) that it is in the Fleischer cartoons, it is used as a device in Thimble Theater. Case in point--the classic "Plunder Island" sequence (which is Segar at his best), which features both Popeye loading up on spinach (and milk--pity the poor cow when a hunger J. Wellington Wimpy is around), while the Sea Hag forces Alice the Goon to likewise eat barrels of the stuff.

A Canadian friend of mine claimed that - judging from Popeye's accent as voiced in the Fleisher cartoons - Popeye was clearly from Newfoundland.

I don't really care what nationality he is. I was just asking a question. Same for the other letter.

Please brush up on your reading comprehension skills.

I've read "Plunder Island," but I'd forgotten that. Good exucuse to go back. I remember that the whiffle hen originally gave Popeye his massive strength.

Blow Me Down

I have no problem with immigrants, cartoon or otherwise. It's just that Popeye isn't one. Had we been told Olive Oyl was a blonde, I'd have responded to that, as well.