What do you think?
Rate this book
Complete Popeye #5
Popeye, Vol. 5: Wha's a Jeep?
Remember last volume’s cliffhanger? The penultimate installment of this acclaimed reprinting of E.C. Segar’s masterpiece begins with “Popeye’s Ark: Part Two,” the tale of Popeye’s eventful reign over Spinachovia — a bleak island populated only by men and lacking all “femininity” — even as Olive Oyl controls the country of Olivia (not to mention the men of Spinachovia). Then in “War Clouds,” the two monarchies come tumbling down in a furious battle as Spinachovia is attacked by the tyrannical land-hungry King of Brutia, King Zlobbo!
This volume’s star is Eugene the Jeep, the rare, friendly, leopard-spotted, and magically-endowed little creature. And Segar makes a great addition to the cast in “The Search for Popeye’s Poppa,” when the ever-cantankerous Poopdeck Pappy is tracked and finally, hilariously found; the title of the follow-up story,
“Civilizing Poppa,” speaks for itself, as it tells the classic tale of man taming beast as Popeye guides a stubborn Pappy through table manners.
And as in every volume, this year-and-a-half ’s worth of full-color Sunday strips are as dazzlingly reproduced as ever.
The adventures of Popeye, Olive, Wimpy, Swee’Pea and the gang on the top are complemented with the riotously funny bonus strip “Sappo,” including a somewhat self-referential storyline where the titular character becomes a cartoonist and teaches the craft to his friend, Professor Wotasnozzle.
168 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2011
97 people want to read
About the author
E.C. Segar
142 books34 followersElzie Crisler Segar was a cartoonist, best known as the creator of Popeye, a pop culture character who first appeared in 1929 in Segar's comic strip Thimble Theatre.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 22, 2016
Volume Five of this Fantagraphics reprint series collects THIMBLE THEATER daily and Sunday strips from 1935-1936. This time, I have both good news and bad news.
I’ll cover the good news first. As usual, there are great gags, some great satire and some great new characters. The new characters include Eugene the Jeep and Poopdeck Pappy, both of whom are fondly remembered today. Eugene is a cute character, who – like Swee’Pea before him - brings an element of innocence and gentleness into an often cynical strip populated with (Popeye and Swee’Pea aside) generally selfish characters. Eugene also brings a fun, fantasy element, as we’re told that he has a “fourth dimensional” brain that, basically, gives him some magical powers, including teleportation and precognition. Segar sometimes uses the latter as a plot device, with characters sometimes misinterpreting Eugene’s predictions.
Poopdeck Pappy, on the other hand, is a mean old reprobate, and in a sense, then, his introduction is a counter point to Eugene’s. Pappy is Popeye’s father, and naturally, he looks exactly like Popeye, but with a grey beard. As I understand it, Segar introduced him as a sort of “answer” to the King Features syndicate’s order to him to “soften” Popeye. Since Popeye was now “civilized,” Poopeye Pappy would be a mean version of Popeye who was completely unrepentant. In this volume, for example, he slugs Olive Oyl more than once, and when Popeye finds him, he sends an octopus to kill him. As with Wimpy, Pappy is such a remarkable jerk that you can’t help but love him, and Segar again proves a master at creating lovable scoundrel types.
Now, we come to the bad news. Sadly, the strips in this volume lack some of the freshness of those in previous volumes. The opening story has Popeye founding the country of “Spinachova” and declaring himself “dictipator.” This is a complete recycling of the “Popilania” story reprinted in Volume 3. Of course, for 1930s readers, there would have been a couple years between the two stories, and Segar does bring some fresh gags into play – and good ones at that – but still, I found the retread to be a little disappointing. Had that been the only retread, I would have been more forgiving, but Segar copies from himself to an even greater extent in the story that introduces Eugene the Jeep. That story is exactly the same – and even copies many of the same gags – as the “Bernice the Whiffle Hen story” that opens Volume One. In both stories, Olive receives a package from an uncle and discovers that it contains an exotic animal from Africa. In both stories, we learn that a millionaire wants the animal in question to exploit its magical powers (Bernice the whiffle hen brought good luck. Eugene actually predicts the future.), and is willing to kill to get it. In both stories, there’s a series of gags in which the millionaire tries to capture the animal, and the animal keeps magically escaping and returning to the hero. In Segar’s defense, the whiffle hen story initially appeared eight years earlier than the Jeep story, and the strip had gained many more readers in the interim due to Popeye’s popularity. It’s likely that most of Segar’s contemporary readers neither noticed the recycling nor cared. Again, though, it’s still a little disappointing, and beyond the recycled plots, I found some staleness is one other place – namely, the Sunday strips. For some time by this point, Wimpy had largely been the star of the Sunday strips, but now, I finally began to view his hamburger-stealing antics as a little repetitive. The sequences are still fun, mind you, but I wished that Segar would mix things up a little bit. As I’ve noted before, Segar died of leukemia in 1938, so I do wonder if maybe he wasn’t starting to get sick by 1935 and whether this might explain the slight dip in quality.
Minor issues aside, this volume still gives us more of Segar’s Popeye, and there’s plenty of fun to be had and plenty of laugh out loud moments. My grumbling doesn’t change the fact that this book was well worth the price of admission, and I look forward to the next volume, which reprints the end of Segar’s run.
I’ll cover the good news first. As usual, there are great gags, some great satire and some great new characters. The new characters include Eugene the Jeep and Poopdeck Pappy, both of whom are fondly remembered today. Eugene is a cute character, who – like Swee’Pea before him - brings an element of innocence and gentleness into an often cynical strip populated with (Popeye and Swee’Pea aside) generally selfish characters. Eugene also brings a fun, fantasy element, as we’re told that he has a “fourth dimensional” brain that, basically, gives him some magical powers, including teleportation and precognition. Segar sometimes uses the latter as a plot device, with characters sometimes misinterpreting Eugene’s predictions.
Poopdeck Pappy, on the other hand, is a mean old reprobate, and in a sense, then, his introduction is a counter point to Eugene’s. Pappy is Popeye’s father, and naturally, he looks exactly like Popeye, but with a grey beard. As I understand it, Segar introduced him as a sort of “answer” to the King Features syndicate’s order to him to “soften” Popeye. Since Popeye was now “civilized,” Poopeye Pappy would be a mean version of Popeye who was completely unrepentant. In this volume, for example, he slugs Olive Oyl more than once, and when Popeye finds him, he sends an octopus to kill him. As with Wimpy, Pappy is such a remarkable jerk that you can’t help but love him, and Segar again proves a master at creating lovable scoundrel types.
Now, we come to the bad news. Sadly, the strips in this volume lack some of the freshness of those in previous volumes. The opening story has Popeye founding the country of “Spinachova” and declaring himself “dictipator.” This is a complete recycling of the “Popilania” story reprinted in Volume 3. Of course, for 1930s readers, there would have been a couple years between the two stories, and Segar does bring some fresh gags into play – and good ones at that – but still, I found the retread to be a little disappointing. Had that been the only retread, I would have been more forgiving, but Segar copies from himself to an even greater extent in the story that introduces Eugene the Jeep. That story is exactly the same – and even copies many of the same gags – as the “Bernice the Whiffle Hen story” that opens Volume One. In both stories, Olive receives a package from an uncle and discovers that it contains an exotic animal from Africa. In both stories, we learn that a millionaire wants the animal in question to exploit its magical powers (Bernice the whiffle hen brought good luck. Eugene actually predicts the future.), and is willing to kill to get it. In both stories, there’s a series of gags in which the millionaire tries to capture the animal, and the animal keeps magically escaping and returning to the hero. In Segar’s defense, the whiffle hen story initially appeared eight years earlier than the Jeep story, and the strip had gained many more readers in the interim due to Popeye’s popularity. It’s likely that most of Segar’s contemporary readers neither noticed the recycling nor cared. Again, though, it’s still a little disappointing, and beyond the recycled plots, I found some staleness is one other place – namely, the Sunday strips. For some time by this point, Wimpy had largely been the star of the Sunday strips, but now, I finally began to view his hamburger-stealing antics as a little repetitive. The sequences are still fun, mind you, but I wished that Segar would mix things up a little bit. As I’ve noted before, Segar died of leukemia in 1938, so I do wonder if maybe he wasn’t starting to get sick by 1935 and whether this might explain the slight dip in quality.
Minor issues aside, this volume still gives us more of Segar’s Popeye, and there’s plenty of fun to be had and plenty of laugh out loud moments. My grumbling doesn’t change the fact that this book was well worth the price of admission, and I look forward to the next volume, which reprints the end of Segar’s run.
April 25, 2011
Fifth volume of Popeye antics ushering in Eugene the Jeep and Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye's old man. The color reproductions are excellent and the episodes are just as great as the ones in Volume 1. The one where the men of Spinachovia refuse to fight unless Popeye brings them hot ladies was funny. The one with Wimpy asking Jeep for tips on the ponies was pretty chuckles-worthy, too. If you haven't got on the Popeye laff ship yet, do it now.
December 3, 2023
With volume 5 the Popeye series reaches its pinnacle. The volume starts with the continuation of 'Popeye's Ark', which starts to drag and to wander, and which fizzles out, ending an all too long continuity. Much better are 'Eugene the Jeep' and 'The Search for Popeye's Poppa', which are both no less than wonderful. The Sunday pages, too, are gems, especially those devoted to Wimpy's schemes. Essential comic literature.
April 5, 2018
Funny, funny stuff.
August 8, 2024
by this point popeye hisself is falling a little into a rut, but wimpy remains one of the great comic characters
May 11, 2015
Perhaps not quite as strong as the previous volume, but this is still stunningly good stuff, as Popeye founds his own country (there's some great political satire here), meets the mysteriously-powered Jeep, and goes on a quest to find his father, among other things. The shifts from story to story are occasionally arbitrary, but the stories themselves are marvels of balance between humour and adventure, and Segar's one of the unquestioned masters of the cartoonist's idiom; his figures are amazingly dynamic and distinct. The Sunday pages remain somewhat less interesting, simply because Segar seems less interested in exploring the potential there, though the Sappo bottom strip does get reduced to a single line of panels just on clever cartooning tricks, leaving more room for Popeye content. A must have for anyone seriously interested in comic strips but great fun for just about anyone, I'd think.
March 17, 2013
In this volume, we meet two new characters who would become prominent in the later Popeye cartoons: Eugene the Magical Jeep and Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye's poppa.
It has been really interesting to read these "Thimble Theater" strips from the late twenties and early thirties. One thing that I've realized is just how one-dimensional the later cartoons made the character of Popeye. While I do still enjoy the Max Fleischer cartoons, I now see that, for the most part, they were one-note takes on Popeye: he eats his spinach and beats up Bluto (who was a very minor character in the strips). However, through the course of "Thimble Theater", Popeye doesn't resort to "busking people in the mush" anywhere near as often as he does in the cartoons.
It has been really interesting to read these "Thimble Theater" strips from the late twenties and early thirties. One thing that I've realized is just how one-dimensional the later cartoons made the character of Popeye. While I do still enjoy the Max Fleischer cartoons, I now see that, for the most part, they were one-note takes on Popeye: he eats his spinach and beats up Bluto (who was a very minor character in the strips). However, through the course of "Thimble Theater", Popeye doesn't resort to "busking people in the mush" anywhere near as often as he does in the cartoons.
August 10, 2014
Popeye as king is kind of boring. And Poopdeck Pappy is a jerk.
It's not until the Sunday color comics that we get back to some of that Wimpy action, butmost of it is not as good as in the previous books.
Quote of the book: "They cannot prove my guilt, so my conscience is clear." (pg. 118)
It's not until the Sunday color comics that we get back to some of that Wimpy action, butmost of it is not as good as in the previous books.
Quote of the book: "They cannot prove my guilt, so my conscience is clear." (pg. 118)
March 26, 2015
The bulk of this book is unwieldy, but the stories are so much fun that it is worth the inconvenience.
November 30, 2025
Popeye rules Spinachova for the last time, gets a Jeep, a strangely unique animal, and more fun are in this collection. What's not to like?
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews