Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Eyepoppin'

 Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

Some time ago, I did a series of pre-Popeye Thimble Theatre Sundays by Elzie Segar. The characters and the storytelling are just as good as in the later Popeye ones (and even some of the character). Helas not many of these have been collected. Comic Journal did a run of 1928 dailies, but here are the Sundays from that same year (or what I have of them). The story itself seems to have run into 1929, but as they say: it's not the destination, it's how you get there. With that you get all the lovely Sappo gags, that Segar drew as a topper for this strip (and Popeye).

2 comments:

Chris Smigliano said...

I noticed a shout-out to George Herriman, creator of KRAZY KAT on one of the desert strips. "Herriman Rocks!" Clever!

Richard Ranke said...

Thank you for these wonderful Thimble Theater Sunday pages. My home-town newspaper didn't start running the Thimble Theater Sundays until November of 1929...and Castor and Ham Gravy were still out west. They finally returned in March of 1930-and Mr. and Mrs. Oyl welcomed Castor home...but when Ham went into the parlor, he saw Olive Oyl sitting in Popeye's lap.(Blow me down!)