Art of the Comic Strip, Part 1

Today's comic strips pretty much suck. Apologies to all the fans out there, but I say this because I know what comic strips used to be and what they're capable of. I am a fan of the classic adventure strips that millions of Americans once read in their newspapers every weekday. They may never have been great literature, but that doesn't mean they can't favorably compare with some great literature. To show you what I mean, I'm going to examine my two favorite strips ever--Mickey Mouse and Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye--and I will discuss the ways their creators produced master storytelling. This post will be about Thimble Theatre.

Most people today know Popeye the Sailor as an animated cartoon star who always fights Bluto (or Brutus) and saves the damsel-in-distress, Olive Oyl. But that's not how he began. In fact, his creator, Elzie Crisler Segar, intended him as a one-off character in Thimble Theatre, a strip that had already been around for ten years when the guy with the overlarge forearms stepped on stage.

In 1919, Segar was asked by his newspaper syndicate to make up a new comic strip that would imitate Ed Wheelan's Midget Movies, a feature in which the characters were "actors" who produced a new "movie" parody every day. So, Segar did as directed and invented Thimble Theatre, whose regular "cast" included the gawky, independent Olive Oyl; her scheming but brave (and short) brother Castor; their ever-patient parents Cole and Nana; and Olive's main suitor, shlubby Ham Gravy. Eventually, the daily movie gags were phased out as Segar developed longer stories with more complex plots. One of those plots, in January 1929, involved a trip at sea, for which Castor required a sailor.

"Hey there!" he called out. "Are you a sailor?" The man in seagoing attire looked askance at Castor and replied, "Ja think I'm a cowboy?"

This new guy wasn't too bright and he murdered the English language regularly, but he was tough, brave, and loyal. Segar had introduced his greatest creation; he just didn't know it yet, so he sent Popeye away after one adventure. But this was an incidental character who turned out not to be incidental to the readers, and they required that the cartoonist bring him back permanently. Thus history was made, and Thimble Theatre became one of the most popular strips in America.

Segar didn't rest on the laurels earned with the invention of the one-eyed sailor--he continued to make his strip ever better. He took elements from comical comic strips, including the "bigfoot" character visuals, and mixed them with the best parts of the adventure-serial continuities to come up with something that was as suspenseful and engaging as it was hilarious and memorable. It wasn't through his artwork that Segar proved himself a consummate cartoon master; he was, at the start of his career, the worst newspaper artists in America, and the visuals in Popeye became merely charmingly adequate. No, it was through the literary and dramatic elements, the ever-expanding, epic storylines and richly developed characterizations that he got to the top of his game.

Those excellent storylines included domestic and stateside plots such as Popeye becoming a cowboy in the West, a star newspaper reporter, and eventually a father to the "orphink" Swee'pea. There was that bit where J. Wellington Wimpy was hired to kill Popeye (he didn't do it). And there was the time Olive got rich and Popeye became her butler; one of my absolute favorite strips was in that sequence, where Popeye has to announce the guests as they arrive for a party at Olive's mansion.

Then there were the international adventures to exotic islands, during which Popeye met his nemesis, the murderous Sea Hag, or "rescued" his father, the irascible Poopdeck Pappy (who didn't want to be rescued). And, of course there were the politically themed plots in foreign countries such as the unfortunately named Nazilia (apparently not a satire on the Nazis, who were rising to power at the same time); that dysfunctional nation was ruled by the classic King Blozo, who whined "Worry, Worry, Worry" whenever there was a problem. Maybe it was that adventure that inspired Popeye to start his own country!

But these stories wouldn't have been nearly as interesting if it weren't for the characters who inhabited them. There was Popeye himself, who always blew his money on craps, considered the occasional brawl to be a normal part of his life, and loved Olive even when she seemed to detest him. Speaking of Olive Oyl, unlike in the later animated cartoons, in the comics she was a liberated gal who regularly brained and bruised her suitors with living-room furniture. The bald-headed, Jazz-age hustler Castor Oyl retained a strong personality even when he went from leading man to Popeye's mentor and sidekick; even when he was scheming, he still had a pretty good heart. Wimpy, whom editor Rick Marschall has called "one of comic strips' greatest creations," was almost totally mercenary, coveting food (more than just hamburgers) and money at the expense of others, yet remaining absolutely hilarious. The list of cast members goes on--Alice the Goon, Eugene the Jeep, and so many others. The remarkable thing is that Segar obviously had genuine respect for his characters and never manipulated them for the sake of a plot.

Segar's genius lay not only in his ability with storylines and personalities but also in his superior and well-developed techniques. While keeping the incidents intriguing, engaging, and suspenseful, he still had to fulfill the requirements of comedy by providing a daily gag, which he did as often with pauses, double-takes, and slapstick as he did with the crisp dialogue that also had to cover conversations, exposition, and witty comments. And his sense of timing was better than most of his contemporaries in the cartooning field.

Plus, there's the fact that he fit all of that into three or four panels per day, a structure that he never allowed to hamper him. Indeed, he continued to use the daily comic-strip format like a theater stage even after he'd abandoned the movie-parody routine. At the age of twelve, Elzie Segar had secured employment with the local opera house and he remained after it transitioned to a cinema. His re-creations of the movies' plots in chalk on the sidewalk outside the theater foreshadowed his eventual calling. As an adult, he thought of the panels' side borders as the wings of a stage, and he let his paper actors talk to the audience (readers). No other American comic-strip artist dwelt so much on theatrical references, and he cleverly mixed the conventions of stage and cinema with those of his own medium.

When the Fleischer Studios adapted Popeye and friends for animated shorts, they reduced everything to an overly simple formula where Olive is always in danger, Bluto (a one-off in the comics) is always the villain, Popeye always needs spinach to win the day, and poor Castor Oyl is nowhere to be found. Gone were the complex plots and the sparkling dialogue in favor of a purely visual presentation. I'm not bothered, though, because I'll always have the collected editions of E.C. Segar's brilliant run on the best comic-strip series ever made.

Coming up next: an example of animated cartoons being adapted for the comics--and surpassing them. I'm talking about my second-favorite strip, Mickey Mouse as drawn by the inimitable Floyd Gottfredsen.

References: Bobby London, Donald Phelps, Ron Goulart, Martin Williams (Forewords to The Complete E.C. Segar)

#storytelling #comics