Review by Woodrow Phoenix
As established in the first volume of this reprint series, Popeye the Sailor Man is an oddly-proportioned, eccentric ball of contradictions. He’s rough and uneducated, with a very idiosyncratic vocabulary, but quick witted and never at a loss for a snappy comeback. He’s unconcerned with fancy clothes or etiquette, but very sensitive to jibes about his appearance. He’s tender-hearted and likely to be moved to tears by the sight of a mistreated child, but has an uncontrollable, hair-trigger temper that sees him beating the tar out of any and all persons who insult or annoy him, whether in the boxing ring or outside it. And although he’s always broke, as soon as his superhuman strength earns him a big payday, he gives all the money away to hungry orphans or homeless families almost immediately, with no thought of his own needs at all.
This features another two years of anarchic, comedic, romantic and frequently ultraviolent newspaper strips originally published in 1932 and 1933. This volume is called Wimpy & His Hamburgers, a useful peg to hang a title on since Segar didn’t theme these strips, but J. Wellington Wimpy features quite heavily in the second half of this book. His shameless mooching, cowardice and insatiable greediness generate lots of amusing complications. Wimpy’s manipulative (“Let’s you and him fight”) schemes and astonishing selfishness generally mean arguments and knockout brawls aplenty for Popeye to resolve things, until even his patience is gone. In the Sunday page for February 12, 1933: “Wimpy, ain’t ya got no blasted self-respeck?” says the exasperated hero, “Are yer goner be like this all yer life? What ya ever goner amount to? Ever’ man on Eart’ is susposed to do sumpin’ importink! Blow me down! I kin not see no reasing for you gettin’ born’d!”
The range and variety of ways that Wimpy manages to consume food without paying for it rivals George Herriman’s Krazy Kat for ingenuity and there’s a vaudevillian snap to the cons and tricks as Popeye flips between wanting to beat some sense into his friend or weeping at the terrible state of Wimpy’s existence. Segar’s drawing settles into a steady rhythm throughout this volume, with beautifully funny body language selling the jokes, as in a hilarious page of Popeye performing dance steps to a selection of violin tunes. This collection is introduced with a four page strip by Kevin Huizinga. His commentary on the origins of Wimpy winds around his own amusing observations about Segar’s work and the comics process in general. The next volume features less domestic comedy and some real jeopardy instead when Popeye takes to the seas once again, in an adventure called ‘Plunder Island’.
