Popeye Lets You and Him Fight

Fantagraphics’s third volume collecting Segar’s original Popeye (Thimble Theatre) covers 1932-1934 includes the never-republished extra-large strips set at the Chicago World’s Fair and an insightful scholarly essay.

The third volume (of six) of the acclaimed hit series collecting the entirety of E.C. Segar’s original Popeye (a.k.a. Thimble Theatre) comic strips features work from 1932 to 1934. In addition to the daily and Sunday strips, this volume will present a true collector’s item: Segar’s never-reprinted two-week “World’s Fair” continuity. In 1933, in addition to the normal daily and Sunday continuities, Segar produced a special, two-week sequence of extra-large strips (two to three tiers each) in which Wimpy and Popeye travel to Chicago to take in the World’s Fair. Olive Oyl is left behind on account of “she ain’t wide-minded,” but Olive has other ideas and follows Popeye to make sure he isn’t flirting with any pretty girls. This sequence has never been republished since its original publication 75 years ago.Stories in this volume include “The Eighth Sea,” a nautical thriller-diller starring, in his only appearance in the actual Segar Popeye strip, Bluto (plus the shape-shifting detective Merlock Jones); “Long Live the King” and “Popeye King of Popilania”; “Star Reporter,” in which Popeye juggles his career as a newspaperman and a recent adoptive Dad to the one and only Swee’pea. Plus over a year’s worth of great full color Sunday strips, many of them focusing on everyone’s favorite glutton Wimpy!This volume also contains the conclusion of Donald Phelps’s incisive and articulate critical essay on Segar’s work “Real People, Real Theatre.”E.C. Segar blended complex narratives, slapstick traditions, brilliant characterization, and an inimitable cartooning style to create the most exciting and profound humor of his era, rivaling the great film comics of his era, such as Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. Discover this American treasure in this handsomely designed series perfect for all ages.