Popeye, Vol. 1: I Yam What I Yam
Segar had been drawing theThimble Theatrestrip for a decade when he launched its leading characters, Castor Oyl and Ham Gravy, on a seafaring adventure in 1929. The squinty-eyed seaman they hired for the voyage quickly came to the fore, soon displacing all of the strip's other characters except for Castor's sister Olive, who became the hired tar's scrawny sweetie. Most people know Popeye, as the character was called, through his animated incarnation, but Segar's strip is a far richer creation combining a colorful cast, outlandishly inventive dialogue, slapstick humor, and lengthy story lines that originally unfurled over the course of months. The first two years ofPopeyecontained in this oversize volume show those ingredients in place right from the start, even before Segar added such beloved second bananas as Wimpy and Swee'pea. The book's series title,E. C. Segar's Popeye, is telling. Although many hands continued the strip after its creator's death in 1938, none of them came close to capturing the brilliance Segar displays in these pages.Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved