Customer Reviews

Popeye, Vol. 4: Plunder Island

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The latest Popeye compilation switches things up a bit by presenting the Sunday color comics first with the black and white dailies following. I assume this is because the Sunday strips feature the highly touted "Plunder Island" story and the publishers wanted to lead with their best stuff. The Sundays generally focused on the peripheral characters including Wimpy, Mr. Geezel and Roughhouse and the trend continues in "Plunder Island". This is the one rare instance where nearly all the Popeye characters are together in an adventure as they search the high seas for treasure while battling the ruthless Sea Hag and Alice the Goon. I must confess that I found "Plunder Island" to be a bit overrated and I've seen E.C. Segar's produce better writing. In fact I think there are several stories in this very book that are better. What makes it unique is that it's perhaps the only Segar produced adventure in color.

In 1934 the success of Popeye reached a point of critical mass and King Features owner William Randolph Hearst informed Segar that the character would need to be toned down as he was becoming very popular with kids. In this collection you can start to detect the transformation. Gone are the cartoon curse words that Popeye would unleash and the gambling (mostly) and his devastating punches are now reserved for truly despicable characters. When you really get down to it Popeye was pretty much a jerk in previous books but a sensitive jerk with a weakness for hard luck cases and children. I don't know at what point in 1934 the decree was sent down because early on in the year he was still haranguing Olive Oyl telling her that she looked like "suppin' the cat drugged in" and at one point even knocked her on her rear with a thrown vase. I'm not going to pretend that watering down Popeye improved the character but Elzie Segar's wit and charm remains even if a bit muzzled.

Although Popeye has passed through countless hands he remains E.C. Segar's brainchild and it was Segar who infused him with the most depth. In one strip Popeye is walking down the street dressed in a full tuxedo when a police officer starts guffawing at his attire. Popeye responds by delivering a teeth rattling punch to the officers chin saying, `Laugh, an' show yer igmorance, ya dumb cop' (this act sort of flies in the face of the supposedly tamer Popeye). In many ways Popeye can be summed up in this one frame. First it shows Popeye's extreme sensitivity to any slight against his character and how his first reaction is always towards violence. It's also yet another demonstration of Popeye's complete lack of respect for authority. When you look deeper you can see E.C. Segar is keenly aware of the irony of Popeye's words. He calls the cop dumb and ignorant but says it using poor grammar while mispronouncing the word ignorance.

Popeye is essentially the ultimate free spirit unencumbered by social conventions or even mortality. Deadly poison darts have no effect and a bullet through the chest is no worry because it only `nicked' his heart. Popeye feels the freedom to say whatever he wants to whomever he pleases. In one awesome scene he says to a tyrant, "I sez, where ya want to fall at? Over here or over there or do ya jus' want to sorta crumple up where yer standin'?" Popeye's threats are never idle boasts. Popeye is a superman with real human flaws.

There are actually two high seas adventures featuring the Sea Hag. Besides "Plunder Island" there is a story where Popeye encounter the Sea Hags meaner, uglier sister and her immortal servant the elephantine caveman Toar. In another story Popeye returns to Nazilia and ends up assisting the hapless King Blozo who once again finds his kingship taken from him. I always love the King Blozo stories. While out west Popeye runs into his old pal Castor Oyl who ends up hanging around for a few adventures. Before the book is through you will see Popeye dressed as a woman, in another story he wears a ladies teddy and in another he puts on a pair of prosthetic legs to give his thighs and calves a shapely movie star look. It all contrasts hilariously with his ultra he-man persona. The final story leads into the next book with Popeye founding his own kingdom of Spinichovia.

As with the previous three books I give this one my highest recommendation. My only issue is that Segar recycles a lot of his ideas in this book. Besides Alice the Goon the only other notable first appearances are June and Jefferson Vanripple and Toar but these are extremely obscure characters that few will care about. The next book in the series will feature fan favorites Poopdeck Pappy and the Jeep. If you've never read Segar's works you are in for a huge treat. This is absolutely as good as it gets.

How many comics readers received their first exposure to E.C. Segar's work through the medium of THE SMITHSONIAN COLLECTION OF NEWSPAPER COMICS? I was one of those lucky stiffs whose first taste of the "real" Popeye and friends was the deep, refreshing draft reprinted in full (and, for the first time, in color) in this volume. "Plunder Island," which ran in Segar's Sunday pages from December 1933 to July 1934 -- it was by far the most ambitious story the artist ever mounted in a Sunday format -- has been described by such respected comics scholars as Bill Blackbeard and Richard Marschall (who fills in for the unreadable Donald Phelps as this installment's introductory essayist) as the greatest single narrative in the history of comics. This is remarkable in view of the fact that 90% of this "epic adventure" consists of shipboard interactions between characters. Segar had used sea voyages for story settings in the past, dating all the way back to "Dice Island" (the story in which Popeye debuted), but, one way or another, the characters' activities off the ship eventually took center stage. Popeye's gang doesn't reach the titular island -- the hideaway where The Sea Hag's (stolen) treasure is stored -- until we hit the last half-dozen strips. It doesn't really matter, as we thrill (and not in a good way) to the introduction of the unsettling "original naked version" of Alice the Goon, chuckle at the paranoid George G. Geezil's increasingly desperate efforts to "kill" Wimpy "to death," and laugh out loud at the sight of Wimpy romancing The Hag and pretending to behead Popeye, just to get at the "50 pounds of frozen hamburger" she has on her ship. Here, "getting there" is definitely more than half the fun.

Segar's best daily-strip narratives contain more satirical punch, but "Plunder Island" is superb entertainment. I do wonder, however, what became of G.B. Gritmore, the secret agent (I guess) who asks to accompany Popeye, his old pal "Salty" Bill Barnacle, and the rest of the gang on their trip. Gritmore appears in one panel in the strip of 12/31/1933, is invited aboard by Popeye, and never appears again. Did Segar simply forget about him, or did he make a strange "New Year's Resolution" to cut down on the number of characters he had to draw? (Professor Cringley, the shivering savant who'd escaped The Hag's clutches, and "Miss Sniddle" gradually disappear from the narrative during the cruise, but at least they got some face time before doing so.) There is one possible "escape hatch" here: Popeye says that Gritmore can only come aboard "if ya' gots bravery an' intestimal fortnitude (sic)." Perhaps Gritmore fell at this "first turn."

This era's daily THIMBLE THEATER strips -- pushed to the rear of this volume for understandable reasons -- are a mixed bag. The late 1933-early 1934 strips are somewhat disappointing, perhaps because Segar was preoccupied with the Sunday continuity. Popeye's sojourn running a newspaper in Puddleburg is wrapped up with a dispatch that may reflect the artist's dissatisfaction with the way the story was progressing. (Another case in point: Puddleburg is described as "the laziest town on Earth," and the natives are initially depicted as sleepy-eyed and blase, but this characterization disappears almost as quickly as it's introduced.) As he cuts and runs, Segar does take a few funny shots at the trials and tribulations of cartoonists, in the person of the dish-faced gagman, B. Loony Bullony. "Romance and Riches" is a lengthy, and somewhat dawdling, story in which Popeye and Olive (who's put on airs since glomming onto her share of Plunder Island's riches) break up. Popeye goes to stay with billionaire Mr. Vanripple and Vanripple's comely (by Segar's modest standards) daughter June, who winds up falling hard for the sailor man. Vanripple, who looks like he's stepped out of a Dr. Seuss story, is the closest that Segar ever came to creating a Scrooge McDuck "type." Given the era (the early New Deal years), he's also a surprisingly benign portrayal of a big business man, though prone to eccentricity (he insists that the underwear-challenged Popeye wear June's frilly teddies, for instance). After Olive's attempt to become a movie star (even to the point of getting fitted with prosthetic legs to "improve her figure"!) destroys her fortune, leaving her a babbling wreck, Segar finally gets the dailies back on track. Not surprisingly, this return to top form "clicks in" just as "Plunder Island" is drawing to a close. "Unifruit," "Black Valley" (somewhat notorious as the "Popeye goes in drag" story), "The Pool of Youth" (the return of The Sea Hag and Alice, not to mention "detective" Castor Oyl, and the introduction of The Hag's vicious sister and the "immortal" caveman Toar), and "Popeye's Ark" (the start of the "Spinachova" story arc, Segar's most politically aware work -- and a daring one too, given the wide intellectual appeal of Fascism and Communism at this time) are all top-notch.

One shouldn't ignore the high quality -- and equally high spirits -- of Segar's secondary work at this time. SAPPO, THIMBLE THEATRE'S companion Sunday strip, is at its very best with imaginative storylines including a shrinking episode (with its arresting image of the microscopic John Sappo cutting his way to freedom through the hide of a germ), the brief but painful marriage of Professor O.G. Wotasnozzle, and a literal war between Wotasnozzle and his equally irascible rival, Professor Finklesnop. And that ain't all, folks: Segar treats his young and young-at-heart Sunday-page readers to "magic movies," drawing lessons, and one-panel moral messages. The last of these may have been one of Segar's efforts to appease William Randolph Hearst, who'd advised him to make Popeye a better role model for kids. With the Fleischer cartoon series starting and gathering steam during this time, the call to tone Popeye down a bit may have been especially urgent. (Don't worry, though, Popeye is still plenty raucous and has his moments of "backsliding.") Only two volumes to go, and some of Segar's best moments are yet to come! What a marvelous collection.

This fourth volume of Fantagraphics' series of E.C. Segar's Popeye comic strips is subtitled "Plunder Island". That is also the title of a long adventure that ran in the Popeye color Sunday strips (it ran for over six months). This is arguably one of the best sequences in the history of the strip, and it introduced Alice the Goon. Other than that classic strip, all the other material is great, too. Highly recommended to fans of classic comic strips.

The fourth big slab of Elzie Crisler Segar's great comic strip Thimble Theatre -- better known, now but even in it's '30s heyday, by the name of its central character, Popeye -- came out from Fantagraphics about a year and a half ago, but it took me a while to work out how to physically read these gigantic, wonderful artifacts in the most satisfying way, so I didn't get to it until recently.

It's called "Plunder Island" -- after the six-months-long Sunday sequence of that name, in which Popeye, Wimpy, Olive, and others go in search of that legendary island, facing the horrible Sea Hag and her weird minion, Alice the Goon, along the way -- and it's just as good and thrilling a mixture of low humor, high adventure, running gags, populist sentiment, brawling action, expressive drawing, and unforgettable characters as ever.

Everything I wrote about the earlier books -- well, except for the detail of which stories are in which volumes; this one has "Plunder Island" and some shorter continuities in the Sundays and a host of stories in the dailies, seeing Popeye back out West, back in Nazilia, hobnobbing with high society, in the "laziest town on earth," searching for the pool of youth, and, finally, building and filling an ark to found a men-only utopia that he'll rule -- is still true of "Plunder Island," and I don't feel like repeating myself. The newspaper comic strip is one of the great American artforms, the second quarter of the 20th century was probably its greatest flowering, and Segar was one of the brightest lights of that Renaissance. This is great stuff, and it's just as funny and enthralling as it was in the mid-30s when Segar was spinning it out, day by day, in the funny papers. Someone who can read Popeye and doesn't has no advantages to speak of over the mule, who cannot read Popeye.

The fourth book in the Popeye reprint series is the best yet. E.C. Segar is at his story telling peak in this volume. I laughed long and hard at the wild going-ons, especially with the now monied Wimpy at his shamelessly glutenous best. Even the Sappo supplements were entertaining. And don't fergit to eats yer spinach!

Segar was an exceptional if not genius cartoonist. There was an incredible number of strips by other artists during this time period but who do you remember like popeye? All else pales in comparison, and is soon forgotten.

The book itself couldn't be any better, size, reproductions, paper, binding, everything top notch.
Also you get three completely separate narratives, so you have several options on how you want to read the book...
Popeye daily strips, the Popeye sunday strips, and Sappo in thimble theater.

I love popeye, and this is a great collection for hours of reading fun. I am soooo glad they are doing these bulk anthologies.

The old E.C. Segar popeye newspaper strips are awesome and Plunder Island is a particularly great storyline. A fine collection.