Popeye, Vol. 4: Plunder Island
The high point of the fourth volume reprinting the classic newspaper strip in chronology is the monumental “Plunder Island” sequence, in which sailor and supporting cast, notably including sweetie Olive Oyl and incorrigible scrounger J. Wellington Wimpy, set off to find the Sea Hag’s hidden treasure. The epic tale extended for more than seven months’ worth of Sunday strips and proved that the scrappy sailor was at his best a-seafaring. Concurrently, in the daily strips, Popeye took over a newspaper in Puddleburg, the laziest town on earth; Olive inherited a fortune and hired Popeye as her butler; the gang returned to the kingdom of Nazila and journeyed west to investigate theft at a gold mine; and Popeye set out in an ark to found a new country he intended to call Spinachova. Other comic strips of the era were arguably as funny, others offered equally rousing adventure, and the brilliant wordplay of Krazy Kat remains unmatched. But none of the others combined all those elements with the felicity of Segar’s. --Gordon Flagg