Popeye / Thimble Theater

Also: the smithsonian book of newspaper comics is incredible.

Reading second volume, still awesome. Anyone else following this?

Yeah, it's incredible stuff, isn't it?

Anyone else following this?

Absolutely!

I think my favourite segment is probably when Popeye becomes rich and gives all his money away in the Reverse Bank.

Some of the v. greatest comics ever drawn, and the new Fanta h/cs are supernice, w/ the color Sunday pages and all - I just wish they were issuing more than 1 a year

I'm sort of ok with that, actually - I'm a slow reader, especially when it comes to anthologies. Terry & The Pirates totally left me in the dust - I wasn't even halfway through the first volume when the second showed up. Of course, I'd say Segar's absurdist misfit narratives have aged a bit better than Caniff's rah-rah chauvinist adventure yarns (which have their charm too)...

you guys have all seen the fansite posted on the Barks thread in ILE, right?

yeah, 1 a year is fine by me (I'm four vols behind on the Peanuts books now!) - apart from pacing my reading/not running out too soon and NEVER HAVING ANY MORE, it gives them a better chance to sell more of each volume, by giving each one longerr bookstore shelf time. and hopefully that can build into enough sales weight across another four years that it'll be worth doing a couple of pre-Popeye TT best-ofs...

Someday, I'd like to write love letters and sign them "Your li'l boob dick."

Has anyone read the Bud Sagendorf comics? I'm trying to decide whether to pull the trigger on buying those collections, as well.

Heads up: Sunday Press is putting out a collection of pre-Popeye Thimble Theatre strips this fall.

in, like, Sunday Press format, or a reading-format best-of, or...?

there’s ten years of strips pre-Popeye

What do I look like, the president of Sunday Press? They haven't given many deets yet afaict. I'm guessing a best-of, which I'm fine with since I never thought this stuff would be reprinted at all. Here's the solicitation copy, since I'm apparently also chief websearch officer over at Google:

More than a decade before creating the world's most famous cartoon sailor, E. C. Segar drew the Charlie Chaplin comic strip, a daily strip about Chicago entertainment, and then Thimble Theatre, where Popeye was to be born. This volume features examples of all of Segar's early comics and over 100 pre-Popeye Thimble Theatre Sunday pages, including the complete run of the famed Western desert saga, a series that rivals his later work in art, storytelling and humor. These comics, most of which have never been reprinted before, are here for the whole popeyed world to see.

you’re the chief officer of headsing up iirc

I do the layouts, you do the inking and coloring and publishing and distributing and promoting and customer servicing. This is how it works.