American cartoonist, 1894-1938

Elzie Crisler Segar (December 8, 1894 – October 13, 1938), known by the pen name E. C. Segar, was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of Popeye, a pop culture character who first appeared in 1929 in Segar's comic strip Thimble Theatre.

Charles M. Schulz said of Segar's work: "I think Popeye was a perfect comic strip, consistent in drawing and humor". Carl Barks described Segar as "the unbridled genius as far as I was concerned".

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Early work
• 3 Thimble Theatre, Sappo and Popeye
• 4 Later life and death
• 5 Legacy and reprints
• 6 Timeline
• 7 Popeye & Friends Character Trail
• 8 References
  • 8.1 Works cited
• 9 Further reading
• 10 External links

Early life

Segar was born on December 8, 1894, and raised in Chester, Illinois, a small town near the Mississippi River. The son of Erma Irene (Crisler) and Amzi Andrews Segar, a handyman, his earliest work experiences included *isting his father in house painting and paper hanging. Skilled at playing drums, he also provided musical accompaniment to films and vaudeville acts in the local theater, where he was eventually given the job of film projectionist at the Chester Opera House, where he also did live performances. At age 18, he decided to become a cartoonist. He took a correspondence course in cartooning from W. L. Evans of Cleveland, Ohio. He said that after work he "lit up the oil lamps about midnight and worked on the course until 3 a.m." During this time, Segar also began studying the work of cartoonists that he would later cite as influences on his work, including Rube Goldberg, George McM* and George Herriman (especially Herriman's strip Stumble Inn).

Asked how to say his name, he told The Literary Digest it was "SEE-gar". He commonly signed his work simply Segar or E. Segar above a drawing of a cigar.

Early work

Segar moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he met Richard F. Outcault, the creator of The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown. Outcault encouraged him and introduced him at the Chicago Herald. On March 12, 1916, the Herald published Segar's first comic, Charlie Chaplin's Comic Capers, which ran for a little over a year. In 1917, Segar created Barry the Boob, about an incompetent soldier. Segar also originated two other, short-lived comics for the Herald's Sunday magazine. These were The Mistakes of Mr. Muddle and the Rube Goldberg-inspired And They Get By With It. In 1918, he moved on to William Randolph Hearst's Chicago Evening American, for which he created Looping the Loop and worked as a second-string drama critic. Looping the Loop was a comic strip that gave a whimsical take on the events in Chicago's "Loop" district. "Looping the Loop" made jokes about such issues as silent movies, plays, and the changing seasons; it proved popular with the Herald's readers. Segar married Myrtle Johnson that year; they had two children. In October 1919, Segar covered that year's World Series, creating eight cartoons for the sports pages.

Thimble Theatre, Sappo and Popeye

Main article: Popeye

Evening American Managing editor William Curley thought Segar could succeed in New York, so he sent him to King Features Syndicate, where Segar worked for many years. King Features asked Segar to create a comic strip to replace Midget Movies by Ed Wheelan, who had recently resigned from the syndicate. Segar created Thimble Theatre for the New York Journal, as the replacement for Wheelan's strip. The Thimble Theatre strip made its debut on December 19, 1919, featuring the characters Olive Oyl, Castor Oyl and Harold Hamgravy, whose name was quickly shortened in the strip to simply "Ham Gravy". They were the strip's leads for about a decade. Segar began writing long storylines or "continuities" for Thimble Theatre in 1922. In these, the characters would have lenghty adventures in Africa and the Wild West. In one storyline, the characters encountered a superhuman "tough guy" named Harry Hardegg, who was able to break a moving buzz saw with his head. Comics historian Bill Blackbeard has described Harry Hardegg as a "prototype" for Popeye.

E. C. Segar's Sappo (1933)

Segar also created The Five-Fifteen for King Features in 1920; it was re*led Sappo in 1926. The Five-Fifteen started its run as a Monday-through-Saturday strip. In 1926, the re*led Sappo was converted into a Sunday-only topper to the Thimble Theatre Sunday pages. Initially, this strip revolved about the exploits of suburban couple John and Myrtle Sappo. However, Segar later added the character of inventor Professor O. G. Wotasnozzle to Sappo. Wotasnozzle's bizarre machines soon became the focus of the narrative.

On January 17, 1929, when Castor Oyl needed a mariner to navigate his ship to Dice Island, Castor picked up an old sailor named Popeye in the docks. Popeye's first line in the strip, upon being asked if he was a sailor, was "'Ja think I'm a cowboy?" At first Segar intended Popeye to be a once-off character, but after large numbers of newspaper readers wrote in requesting the character's return, Segar made Popeye the focus of Thimble Theatre. Segar initially depicted Popeye as a quarrelling antihero. Segar's storylines for the Popeye-focused Thimble Theatre drew on several fictional genres, including Westerns, pirate swashbucklers, Sports stories, and fantasy stories. Some of the other notable characters Segar created include J. Wellington Wimpy and Eugene the Jeep.

In 1929, Segar and his friend, screenwriter Norton S. Parker, began work on The Sea Hag, a prose novel for adults that would have featured both Popeye and the villainess the Sea Hag. However, King Features refused to grant Segar and Parker permission to publish the novel. The Sea Hag has never been put into print.

In 1934, King Features (noting the increasing popularity of the Popeye character with children) ordered Segar to tone down Popeye's swearing and brawling. Although irritated by the order, Segar complied, and made Popeye more of a straightforward hero, who often demonstrated kindness to children and animals.Segar continued to produce Thimble Theatre, which, by 1938, was being published in five hundred newspapers across the world. Popeye was adapted into a series of cartoons by the Fleischer Studios, which greatly increased the character's popularity. Popeye was also licensed by King Features for hundreds of toys, games and other products. The commercial success of these products ensured King Features paid Segar highly for his work; by 1938, the syndicate was giving Segar a salary of $100,000 dollars a year.

Later life and death

Segar and his family later moved to Santa Monica, California. According to Segar's *istant, Bud Sagendorf, Segar lived near George Herriman. However, although the two cartoonists admired each other's work, they never visited each other in this period.After prolonged illness, Segar died of leukemia and liver disease in October 1938 at the age of 43.

Legacy and reprints

Segar was among the first cartoonists to combine humorous situations with long-running adventures.

Comics creators who cited E.C. Segar's work as an influence included Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Boody Rogers, Charles M. Schulz, Carl Barks, and Robert Crumb.

A revival of interest in Segar's creations began with Woody Gelman's Nostalgia Press. Robert Altman's live-action film Popeye (1980) is adapted from E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre comic strip. The screenplay by Jules Feiffer was based directly on Gelman's Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye the Sailor, a hardcover reprint collection of 1936–37 Segar strips published in 1971 by Nostalgia Press. In 2006, Fantagraphics published the first of a six-volume book set reprinting all Thimble Theatre daily and Sunday strips from 1928 to 1938, beginning with the adventure that introduced Popeye.

In 1971, the National Cartoonists Society created the Elzie Segar Award in his honor. According to the Society's website, the award was "presented to a person who has made a unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning." The NCS board of directors chose the first winners, while King Features selected recipients in later years. Honorees have included Charles Schulz, Bil Keane, Al Capp, Bill Gallo and Mort Walker. The award was discontinued in 1999.

In 2012, cartoonists Roger Langridge and Bruce Ozella teamed to revive the spirit of Segar in a 12-issue limited series, Popeye, published by IDW.

In 2018, Sunday Press Books published Thimble Theatre & The Pre-Popeye Comics of E.C. Segar, collecting Segar's early comic strip work.

Timeline

E. C. Segar's Looping the Loop (1918)

Popeye & Friends Character Trail

In 1977, Segar's hometown of Chester, Illinois, named a park in his honor. The park contains a six-foot-tall bronze statue of Popeye. The annual Popeye Picnic, a weekend-long event that celebrates the character with a parade, film festival and other activities, is held the first weekend after Labor Day. In 2006, Chester launched the "Popeye & Friends Character Trail", which links a series of statues of Segar's characters located throughout town. Each stands on a base inscribed with the names of donors who contributed to its cost and is unveiled and dedicated during the Popeye Picnic. The 2006 debut sculpture of hamburger-loving Wimpy stands in Gazebo Park. A statue of Olive Oyl, Swee'Pea and the Jeep, located near the Randolph County Courthouse, followed in 2007. In 2008, a Bluto statue was dedicated at the corner of Swanwick and W. Holmes Streets, in front of Buena Vista Bank. The 2009 statue of Castor Oyl and Bernice the Whiffle Hen stands in front of Chester Memorial Hospital. One additional statue has been unveiled each year.

Spinach Can Collectibles/Popeye Museum is located in the center of the city.(Opera House)

On December 8, 2009, Google celebrated Segar's 115th birthday with a Google Doodle of Popeye. The doodle used Popeye's body as the 'g', had 'oogl', drawn to resemble Segar's drawing style, and a spinach can as the 'e', and featured Popeye punching the 'oogl' to cause the spinach to fly at him through the air.

References

Works cited

• Grandinetti, Fred (2004). Popeye: An Illustrated Cultural History. McFarland. ISBN:978-0-7864-1605-9. Retrieved June 24, 2012.

Further reading

• Blackbeard, Bill. Marschall, Richard (ed.). "E. C. Segar's Knockabouts of 1925 (and low blows before and after): The Unknown Thimble Theatre Period". Nemo. Fantagraphics Books (3): 6–25.

External links

• Comics portal
• Biography portal

• Official site for Popeye & Friends Character Trail
• "E.C. Segar" by Ed Black
• "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Zak Sally Minneapolis City Pages
• Lambiek Comiclopedia article about E.C. Segar
• E.C. Segar Gallery
• "Popeye's Pop EC Segar"
• E.C. Segar's 115th Birthday Doodle in Google Logo Museum
• E. C. Segar at Find a Grave

Authors and artists

• Hy Eisman
• Seymour Kneitel
• Roger Langridge
• Bobby London
• Bruce Ozella
• Bill Pearson
• Bud Sagendorf
• George Wildman
• Doc Winner
• Bela Zaboly

Theatrical shorts

• Popeye the Sailor
  • Fleischer Studios cartoons
  • Famous Studios cartoons

Feature film

• Popeye

Television shows

• Popeye the Sailor
• The All New Popeye Hour
• Popeye and Son
• The Popeye Show
• Popeye's Island Adventures

TV specials

• Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter
• The Popeye Valentine's Day Special - Sweethearts at Sea
• Popeye's Voyage: The Quest for Pappy

Video games

• Arcade game
• Popeye no Eigo Asobi
• Popeye (Game Boy)
• Popeye 2
• Popeye Saves the Earth
• Rush for Spinach
• Ijiwaru Majo Seahag no Maki
• Beach Volleyball

Other

• Popeye Song Folio
• Popeye Village
• Popeye and Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges