The Fabuleous Fifties

Well, Blow Me Down

Thursday Story Strip Day

I am a huge fans of the work of Roger Langridge. His Fred the clown on itself was hilarious. Then, after giving an interview to The Comic Journal indicating he might stop doing comics, he turns around and starts doing the best reincarnation of the Muppets since the original television series - in comic form. Then he leaves the company creating those comics (at the moment Disney/Marvel takes back the licence) and creates his own new genius masterwork called Snarked. The adventures of a little brat princes and her even younger brother the Heir to the Throne who try to find their lost father the King with the help of the Walruss and the Carpenter - all of hich is played out in the Alice in Wonderland world, of course. You can see all of this and more on his awesome wesite The Hotel Fred, where you can also find the announcement that he will be writing a new Popeye comic book. As a child he was hugely influenced by the Popeye telvision cartoons and as a young adult he was a fan of the original by Segar. So we know we are in good hands there. I will certainly order my copies.

All this made me want to have a look at the original work by Segar. Not the Popeye stories, which have been reprinted by Fantagraphics in a pretty cool format, but the strip he wrote and drew for years before Popeye came along, Thimble Theater. Unfortunately, whatever scans I could get was not much. In fact, what you find here is pretty much what I could lay my hands on, about three month woth of Sundays from 1926 and one month of Sundays from 1928. Still, it shows that Segar was a genius even before he created the spinache eating freak we all know and love. I know I am a sucker for the weird and unknown, but how come none of this has ever been reprinted...?

So for Roger (send him by, if you know him) and all the other fans... here is Olive Oyl and her brother Castor in some early stories...