Popeye, Vol. 3: Let's You and Him Fight!
In the third oversize volume chronologically collecting the exploits of the indefatigable comic-strip sailor, black-and-white weekday installments offer lengthy, adventure-oriented continuities, such as the seafaring epic “The Eighth Sea,” featuring Popeye’s first tussle with Bluto, and “Star Reporter,” in which he joins the Fourth Estate, acquires his “infink” Swee’pea, and becomes a wandering amnesiac after a blow to the head gives him Bonkus of the Konkus. The less narrative-driven color Sundays, in which slapstick comes to the fore, are equally wonderful, especially those focused on the magnificent scoundrel J. Wellington Wimpy, one of the great creations of American humor, who “looks like a down-at-the heels Buddha,” Donald Phelps observes in the introduction, and elevates slothfulness to an art. Because he died in 1938 at only 43, Segar drew Popeye for less than a decade, but none of his successors approached his felicitous blending of vigorous cartooning and spellbinding narrative. Modern audiences who know Popeye and his supporting cast only through later animated cartoons will be surprised by the richness of his original incarnation. --Gordon Flagg