Thursday, January 26, 2012

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...

















9 comments:

Roger Langridge said...

Thanks Ger!

Ger Apeldoorn said...

Hope to meet you someday at some convention!

mr ed said...

I've got all the Thimble Theater dailies from 1922 on. It took a few years to really get going but by 1925 the strip is in high gear. A longish run was reprinted in an issue of TCJ a couple of years ago.
I'm also lucky to have the two year Desert Trek Sunday adventure which began long before Popeye showed up in the dailies, and ran until slightly after Popeye's debut.
The "Desert Trek" is one of the great classics in the history of comics, and should be collected.

patrick ford

Roger Langridge said...

Hey Patrick, are you interested in trading scans? I've got an almost-complete run of Barney Google from the Billy DeBeck years if you're interested...

mr ed said...

Roger, Thanks for your nice offer, but I don't have a scanner.

patrick ford

Roger Langridge said...

Bah. Never mind, drop me an e-mail at hotelfred(at)gmail.com and I'll hook you up with the Barneys anyway, if you're so inclined.

mr ed said...

Thanks Roger I noticed you have a fair number of Barney Google strips posted at your own site.
Sorry about the lack of a scanner, not having a blog or anything like that I just don't have any use for a scanner.

patrick ford

Unknown said...

Has the Thimble Theater "Desert Trek" Storyline ever been printed in book form?

Richard Ranke said...

Recently a wonderful book has come out of Pre-Popeye Thimble Theater Sunday pages, including the desert trek storyline in it's entirity. (The last Sunday page in the book is Popeye's first Sunday page.)