Review by Win Wiacek

This eighth collection of Bud Sagendorf’s witty Popeye comics again demonstrate why his his loose, rangy style and breezy scripts brought the strip itself back to the forefront of popularity and made reading it cool and fun all over again. This selection originally saw print in 1956 and 1957.

We rejoin the ceaseless parade of laughs, surreal imagination and thrills with ‘Thimble Theatre presents Popeye and Swee’Pea in “Wishing” or Spinach is Still King!”’, wherein the bored “infink” shambles upon an alien incursion and tricks the haughty invaders out of their irresistible, unbeatable Wish-o-Matic machine. Soon the impressionable kid is king of the world and Popeye is forced into drastic action.

The family is afloat for follow-up bedtime tale and provider of the volume title ‘I Hates Bullies!’ as the mariner, Olive and Wimpy are lured to an exotic island and seduced into liberating its people from enslaving Boss Black Allen.

Back-up feature Sappo was by now reduced to gullible foil and hapless landlord to the world’s worst lodger. Professor O.G. Wotasnozzle – The Professor with the Atomic Brain would callously inflict the brunt of his genius on the poor schmuck. Here that means inventing super-fast growing redwoods but being too self-absorbed to keep the seeds out of the rain. Later inclusions have Sappo turning the tables, Wotasnozzle’s reducing pills, and a fishing contest augmented by weird science.

‘King Popeye of Popilania!’ has the sailor man set out to create the perfect country, but soon finds kinging it is a lot of work, especially if your friends are all ambitious traitors and other nations think they can push you around. For a while things look bleak for the Popilania, until the desperate King unleashes secret weapon General Wimpy…

Popeye an’ Swee’Pea then turn the tables on villainous reprobate Poopdeck Pappy after the sailor’s crooked father fakes his own death in ‘Pappy’s Spook’. ‘The Search for the Spinach Icebox’ sees our well-travelled hero targeted by secret society WAFPOM (World Association For Prevention Of Muscles) after he buys two million tons of the miraculous mineral rich vegetable. With attacks mounting, he needs someplace safe to store his leafy treasure and on Wimpy’s suggestion heads to Antarctica, where WAFPOM and even stranger foes are waiting.

Popeye and friends then meet ‘The Dog Who Wore A Crown” – or – Going To the Dogs!’ A quick visit with King Blozo finds the scatty ruler absent and his dog ruling in his stead. Most annoyingly, the monarch has appointed Popeye as Royal Dog Sitter. As the dutiful sailor surrenders to the inevitable, things become more complicated when the moody pooch – AKA “Birdseed” – decides Swee’Pea should be in charge.

The gang are rattled in ‘The Mountain that Talked Back!’ as Olive’s deteriorating nerves prompt a vacation on ominously named “Thunder Island” and a badly-timed stay on a volcano in full eruption mode. Everything changes once Popeye realise the shakes are fakes and a gang of criminals are making them patsies in a plot and our hero breaks out the spinach.

Outrageous and side-splitting, these universally-appealing yarns are evergreen examples of narrative cartooning at its most surreal and inspirational.