Popeye
Popeye (English colloquially "Glotzauge" ) is a comic - and cartoon character of the American cartoonist Elzie Crisler Segar . 70 years after the death of its creator, the sailor who devoured spinach was given the public domain in many countries in 2009 . This does not apply to later media such as films and computer games and, for example, music.
comics
Elzie Segar
From 1919 Segar drew a comic series for the newspaper syndicate King Features with the title Thimble Theater . The protagonists of the series were Castor Oyl , his sister Olive Oyl and her friend Ham Gravy . In English, the names result in the terms "castor oil", "olive oil" and "gravy". The first daily appeared on December 19, 1919, the first Sunday page on April 18, 1925.
On January 17, 1929, a seaman appeared as a supporting character for the first time in this series: Popeye. Segar gave him a striking appearance with the captain's hat, the anchor tattoo on his left forearm, the grotesque proportions of his arms and a crooked face (caused by the pipe squeezed in the corner of his mouth and the constant squinting of an eye). The figure of the grumpy but kind-hearted and above all quick-witted sailor quickly became very popular, so that Ham Gravy was replaced by him and Castor Oyl was increasingly marginalized. Only Olive Oyl (shoe size 57, German: Olivia ) continued to play a bigger role as Popeye's lover.
Subsequently, Segar introduced other interesting characters to the series, most notably J. Wellington Wimpy , a philosophizing and opportunistic hamburger parasite . This character, created in 1931, later gave its name to the Wimpy fast food restaurant chain. Wimpy's sayings like "I'd like to invite you over to my house for a duck dinner - you bring the ducks!" , "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today!" Or "Jones is my name, I ' m one of the Jones boys! ” went into American usage.
In 1936 the character Eugene the Jeep was introduced, a mythical creature with a great appetite for orchids and supernatural abilities that it used to rescue Popeye from distress. It is believed that this figure was the namesake for the US military off-road vehicle Willys MB , which was developed from 1940. Other characters in the series that sprung from Segar's imagination were the malevolent Sea Hag (German: the Seeweib or the Seehexe), the eerie Alice the Goon (the Wumme), the Stone Age giant Toar (Thor) and Popeye's adopted son Swee 'Pea ( Popi) and father Poopdeck Pappy .
The successors
After Segar's death in 1938, the series was taken over by other artists who, with their comparatively routine and tame episodes, were never able to build on his qualities. The following is a list of the known participants:
Strips:
- Elzie Segar : 1919-38
- Charles "Doc" Winner & Tom Sims (scenario): 1938/39
- Joe Musial & Sims: 1939
- Bela "Bill" Zaboly & Sims: 1939–54
- Zaboly & Ralph Stein (scenario): 1954–58
- Forrest "Bud" Sagendorf : 1958–86 (Dailies) / 1958–94 (Sundays)
- Bobby London : 1986-92 (Dailies)
- Hy Eisman : since 1994 (Sundays)
Comic books:
- George Wildman : 1969-77, Charlton Comics
- Bill Pearson : 1980s / 1990s (?), Ocean Comics (modernized version of Popeye)
- Bruce Ozella & Roger Langridge (scenario): since 2012
The successors brought the villain Bluto , known from the movies , who had only appeared on Segar, back on the strip and added Popeye's mother to the universe. By far the longest-standing of all his successors was Bud Sagendorf, Segar's son-in-law, who had assisted him with lettering and backgrounds from 1931 . Winner and Musial were also former assistants to Segar in the last year of his life. The strip itself was renamed Thimble Theater starring Popeye in March 1932 , but has only been officially called Popeye since the 1970s . Since 1992 only Sunday pages have appeared in the newspapers. In April 2012 IDW Publishing started a new series of Popeye issues.
Popeye comics in Germany
The Popeye strips appeared in numerous German newspapers, including in the Hamburger Morgenpost since the 1950s . There the seaman heard the name "Kuddl Dutt", which was retained when Popeye had long been known to the general public. Popeye also appeared in various magazines, including in the 1970s and 1980s in the pharmacy magazine "Junior". Popeye had his first German appearance in comic books in 1953/54 in “Buntes Allerlei” by Aller Verlag - as Schifferkarl. Around 1960 he appeared as "Pop the Sailor" in "Felix" von Bastei and in 1963 under the title "Emil and Oskar" (Popeye as Oskar) in the booklet "Blondie und Dankwart" at Lehning.
The first publication in Germany devoted entirely to Popeye was the series “Popeye der Seemann” (later: “Popeye der Spinatmatrose”), which was published by Moewig from 1969 to 1972 in a total of 75 issues . Within the album series published by Carlsen from 1971 to 1975 "Comics - world-famous character series" Popeye was included in volumes 1 and 5; the latter offered Segar material. In 1972 the Melzer-Verlag published a landscape-format paperback entitled “Popeye the Seemann” , and in 1976 the large-format book “Ich Popeye” (also published by Bertelsmann ) , which was entirely dedicated to Segar . At Ehapa-Verlag Popeye first appeared in the MV Comix and then from 1975 to 1982 in the 15-volume softcover album series "Die Abenteuer von Popeye", which was replaced by 16 "Popeye" magazines in 1983/84, and between 1979 and 1982 in 14 "Popeye" paperbacks. In 1979 Ehapa also released the anniversary album "Popeye - The First 50 Years" with both Segar and Sagendorf material. More recently, the sailor appeared in Volume 12 of the 2005 published "Bild Comic-Bibliothek", which included current Sundays by Eisman.
While Popeye was present in Germany up to now mainly through the newspaper trips from Sagendorf, the “Ur-Popeye” was published in 2006 by Mare Verlag. The book published there, simply titled “Popeye”, contains in landscape format all the strips by Segar in which Popeye takes to the high seas. Author and translator Ebi Naumann gave the seaman his own German language for the first time, in which well-known Popeye phrases such as “I yam what I yam an 'tha's all I yam!” Or “Well, blow me down!” To “I pin what I pin - who pinnich tenn? "Or" Lot mi ashore! ".
Since the end of 2006, a complete edition of Segar's Popeye has been published by Fantagraphics in the USA. All six volumes in this series have now been published.
Cartoons
From 1933, a cartoon version of Popeye was created in Max Fleischer's studio . He made his first appearance as a guest in the Betty Boop cartoon Popeye the Sailor , which was named after him, and then started his own series. By the time the Fleischer Studios closed in 1942, 108 Popeye cartoons were created, each around seven minutes in length, 105 of them in black and white and three colored two-reelers twice as long. Unlike the original Segar comics, the films mostly revolve around the trio Popeye, Olive, and Bluto (also known as Brutus).
In 1942, the Famous Studio took over the Popeye series and produced another 125 Popeye cartoons by 1957. From 1943 the films were produced in color. In 1960/1961 another 220 Popeye cartoons were made for television, in which the quality of the animation was greatly reduced. In 1978 Hanna-Barbera produced the series The All-New Popeye Hour and in 1987 the series Popeye and Son .
For the 75th anniversary, Mainframe Entertainment (today: Rainmaker Animation) and Lions Gate Entertainment produced a computer-animated cartoon in 2004: Popeye's Voyage: The Quest for Pappy . The 47-minute long animated film has so far only been released in the USA and Spain.
Popeye and the Spinach
In the cartoons , Popeye's permanent trademark was introduced: spinach , which he swallows cans to develop unimagined strengths for his countless fights. Popeye's preference for spinach is related to the opinion that emerged at the time that this vegetable would be an ideal tonic due to its allegedly high iron content , which at the time also led many parents to “compel” children and adolescents to eat the mostly unappreciated spinach. The unusually high iron content of 35 milligrams assumed at the time was based on an erroneous transfer. The Swiss physiologist Gustav von Bunge calculated the value correctly in 1890, but his information was based on dried spinach. This information was later erroneously assigned to fresh spinach, which, however, consists of approx. 90% water. 100 grams of fresh spinach contain an average of 3.5 milligrams of iron and not the extraordinary 35 milligrams.
A study published in 2012 by the Swedish Karolinska Institute came to the conclusion that it is not iron but the nitrates contained in spinach that can promote muscle growth, especially those for endurance.
Real film adaptation
In 1980 Robert Altman shot the musical version Popeye - The Sailor with the Hard Blow , a co-production by Paramount and Disney with Robin Williams in the title role.
Computer games
In 1982 Nintendo also released an arcade game of the same name , which was also ported to home computers and game consoles such as the Commodore 64 , Philips G7000 and Atari 2600 . It's a platformer / single screen without scrolling , where Popeye has to collect hearts and notes from Olivia.
From 1984 Publisher Alternative Software brought three more Popeye games for the C-64, Amstrad and z. Also on the market for Amiga: Popeye , Popeye 2 and Popeye 3 - Wrestle Crazy .
In 1993 another jump 'n' run called Popeye 2 appeared independently for the Game Boy and in 1994 there was another game (exclusively) in Japan for the Super Famicom under the title Popeye: Ijiwaru Majo Seahag no Maki . Popeye was last seen in 2006 on the Game Boy Advance in The Rush for Spinach .
Filmography
In the 1930s and early 1940s, the Fleischer Studios produced a series of cartoons about the character of Popeye, which are listed below. Films marked with * are public domain under American law and thus appeared on numerous video and DVD publications.
|
1933
1934
1935
|
1936
1937
|
1938
1939
1940
|
1941
1942
|
Trivia
- In Hamburg , Carsten Rehder Str. 62, in front of the restaurant Zum Schellfischposten !, the fish market area in the Hamburg harbor, stands the Popeye-der-Seefahrer monument by Erich Gerer .
- If the biceps tendon tears, causing it to slide down while the muscle on the upper arm contracts, a muscle belly develops just above the crook of the arm. This is similar to Popeye's arm muscles and is therefore referred to as "Popeye's syndrome", see also biceps tendon rupture .
- On Popeye's 75th birthday in January 2004, the Empire State Building was lit up in a spinach green light.
Web links
- "Popeye" cartoons choice of display for direct download from the Internet Archive (Engl.)
- Popeye (1980) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The "Ur-Popeye" at Mare, a review with pictures and quotes from Segar
- 80 years Popeye birthday special
Individual evidence
- ↑ Popeye's copyright to expire in January. Telegraph Media Group Limited 2009, December 30, 2008, accessed January 24, 2009 .
- ↑ IMDB. December 30, 2008, accessed January 24, 2009 .
- ↑ Spenatens gåta solves - därför gör den oss starka. Press release from the Karolinska Institute, June 11, 2012.
- ↑ Because of nitrate: Spinach makes you strong. On: www.handelsblatt.com , June 26, 2012.
- ↑ Grandinetti, Fred M .: Popeye: An Illustrated Cultural History, 2d ed, p. 204.