Potrzebie
Thursday, July 19, 2012
A letter from Popeye
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Bela Zaboly (1910-85) drew Thimble Theatre with Popeye from 1939 until 1959 (with Tom Sims and Ralph Stein scripting). But Zaboly did occasionally do his own Popeye writing, as evident in this April 1942 letter.
Bela Zaboly (1910-85) drew Thimble Theatre with Popeye from 1939 until 1959 (with Tom Sims and Ralph Stein scripting). But Zaboly did occasionally do his own Popeye writing, as evident in this April 1942 letter.
In 1941, Zaboly gave demonstrations
and showed students how to draw Popeye.
Labels: popeye, tom sims, zaboly
¶ 8:37 AM 0 comments
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Popeye is ©2012 by King Features Syndicate
IDW received 11,569 preorders for Popeye #1 from comic retailers, prompting the company to print 13,400 copies. Those extra 2,000 copies quickly sold out, leading to a second print run.
The second issue is illustrated by Tom Neely with a cover by Langridge. Langridge described the cast: "Things are pretty much as you would expect if you know your Segar: Popeye loves Olive, Olive loves Popeye in her own fickle way, Popeye is a devoted stepfather to Swee'Pea, Wimpy's always looking for a free meal, etc. It ain't broke, so we ain't fixing it. Olive's brother Castor and their parents, Cole and Nana Oyl, are a part of the mix too. And you may spot Olive's first boyfriend, Ham Gravy, at some point, if you keep your eyes open. Other familiar faces will pop up as well. I've tried to get all of the regulars from the Segar years in there at some point, even if it's only a cameo."
In rave reviews, Ozella has been described as a "dead-ringer for Segar" and "a great storyteller". Pages seven and nine (below) reveal his working method and show slight changes and adjustments in some panels.
Bruce Ozella's Boston Common (2009)
Bruce Ozella
Labels: craig yoe, langridge, neely, ozella, popeye, segar
¶ 10:57 AM 1 comments
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Death of Newspapers #21: Bela Zaboly
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In 1929, E.C. Segar introduced Popeye in his Thimble Theatre comic strip. After Segar died of leukemia in 1938, the Popeye strip was scripted by Tom Sims, who lived in Ohatchee, Alabama. Doc Winner (1884-1956), who worked in the King Features bullpen, illustrated the strip until the 1938 arrival of Bela Zaboly, aka Bill Zaboly (1910-1985). Sims and Zaboly teamed on the strip from 1938 to 1955. Zaboly continued until 1958 when Bud Sagendorf (1915-1994) took over. The current run of the strip consists of Sagendorf reprints. Zaboly also continued Segar's Sappo topper strip. For more Sappo, go to Stripper's Guide. Zaboly's illustrated signature used the initials "BZ" with the "B" formed by the wings of a bee.
In 1929, E.C. Segar introduced Popeye in his Thimble Theatre comic strip. After Segar died of leukemia in 1938, the Popeye strip was scripted by Tom Sims, who lived in Ohatchee, Alabama. Doc Winner (1884-1956), who worked in the King Features bullpen, illustrated the strip until the 1938 arrival of Bela Zaboly, aka Bill Zaboly (1910-1985). Sims and Zaboly teamed on the strip from 1938 to 1955. Zaboly continued until 1958 when Bud Sagendorf (1915-1994) took over. The current run of the strip consists of Sagendorf reprints. Zaboly also continued Segar's Sappo topper strip. For more Sappo, go to Stripper's Guide. Zaboly's illustrated signature used the initials "BZ" with the "B" formed by the wings of a bee.
December 2, 1951
July 1, 1947
In 1941, Zaboly gave demonstrations
and showed students how to draw Popeye.
Labels: death of newspapers, popeye, sagendorf, tom sims, zaboly
¶ 7:46 PM 2 comments
Friday, May 20, 2011
Popeye: The Great Comic Book Tales by Bud Sagendorf
Craig Yoe, editor and designer. Introduction by Jerry Beck. Yoe Books/IDW, $29.99 (176p) ISBN 978-1-60010-747-4
In the early 1930s, Bud Sagendorf’s sister worked in a Santa Monica art supply store where Popeye creator E.C. Segar bought his art materials. After she introduced the two, the 17-year-old Sagendorf soon had a job as Segar’s assistant on the Thimble Theatre comic strip.
For seven years, Sagendorf learned cartooning from the master. When Segar died in 1938, King Features inexplicably decided not to turn the strip over to Sagendorf. Instead, he was given a job laboring in the King Features bullpen.
In 1948, he began as the writer-artist of Dell’s Popeye comic books (a series he continued until 1962), and he took over the Thimble Theatre strip in 1959.
Craig Yoe notes that Sagendorf, in chalk talks and interviews, most often referred to his newspaper strip: “He rarely talked of his comic book work. Comic strips were Big Time. They had prestige and sometimes even financial reward. Comic books were low-rent, thought of as ‘only’ a kid’s medium, even greatly looked down on in some circles. But the comic books were a great artistic medium for Bud.”
Yoe offers nine color stories that were published between 1948 and 1957 with “a plethora of Popeye twister-sock punches, punchy art, and punch lines.” Yes, plenty of punches are thrown, including Popeye’s rotating “twisker-sock”. “Interplanetary Battle” (1952) pits Popeye against Jetoe, a shape-shifting Martian. “Shrink Weed” (1953), a wild adventure in which Popeye and Swee’pea are miniaturized and used for fish bait, was written a year after Mary Norton’s The Borrowers was first published, and it reads like a satire of Norton’s tiny family. In “The Happy Little Island” (1954) Popeye outwits the underground Dismal Demons who have caused happy islanders to become sad islanders. It’s evident that Sagendorf loved to create imaginative premises and see how Popeye, Wimpy, Olive Oyl and others would deal with the strange situations. It’s fun to go along on these fanciful flights, flowing easily from panel to panel.
As he has done with his other books, Yoe presents a fascinating selection of photos, memorabilia and relevant images, such as Sagendorf-inspired Popeye paintings by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. There’s a 1938 Sagendorf cartoon from Popular Photography, an autographed flier from the 1977 installation of the Popeye statue in Segar’s birthplace, Chester, Illinois, and an “extremely rare” 16-page comic book Sagendorf drew for the Red Cross in 1946.
Sagendorf’s life journey took him from Wenatchee, Washington, to Santa Monica to Manhattan to rural Connecticut to Florida. Bill Pearson, who wrote Popeye comic books after Sagendorf retired, recalled meeting him in Connecticut: “What a genius!... Sagendorf’s comic books were classics, completely his own, with a fascinating unique environment for the cast. He would fashion long, convoluted plots, with Popeye lost in strange places for pages, ruminating about his fate and the fate of the universe. Brilliant stream-of-consciousness tales, with plenty of action and suspense, and clever, silly cartooning that carried it all beautifully.”
Reading just a single story confirms that Pearson’s description is apt. Oddly, the National Cartoonists Society never gave Sagendorf any kind of award. They could make up for that shameful oversight by giving an award to Craig Yoe for delivering this attractive, eye-popping Popeye package.
Bud Sagendorf, at age 23, drawing the
Popular Photography cartoon seen above.
Popular Photography cartoon seen above.
Labels: bill pearson, craig yoe, popeye, sagendorf, segar
¶ 11:28 AM 0 comments
Sunday, January 30, 2011
First appearance of Popeye in 1929.
Above is Rick Baker's Popeye from Fire Wire's What If Cartoon Characters Were
Real? Sort of reminds of Jack Kerouac speculating about what if the Three Stooges were real in Vanity of Dulouz. Also see The Wisdom of Popeye. In his recent autobiography, Jules Feiffer explains how he wrote his Popeye screenplay based on the 1936 E.C. Segar strips in Woody Gelman's 1971 Nostalgia Press Popeye the Sailor book.
Below is from Jeff Koons' Popeye Series. For more on Koons' Popeye Series, go here.
Here is Frederic Tuten's story about Popeye, "L'Odysee", first published in Jeff Koons: Popeye Series (London: Serpentine Gallery and Koenig Books, 2009). Tuten previously did a novelization of Tintin in Tintin in the New World (2005).
To read the rest of the story, go to Literarian.
"L'Odysee" by Frederic Tuten
Then I made me way into the tottering house itself and found it all in shambles. A clothesline freighted with frilly red underwear, not mine, and three pairs of long johns, not mine, stretched across the living room. The bathroom reeked of men’s after-shave and colognes – Brute – and was littered with gum stimulators, nose-hair scissors, moustache trimmers, nail cutters and other implements and toiletries that I never use.
The bedroom. The bedroom. It stabbed me heart. Men’s boots and shoes of various sizes and shapes, quality and age were lined along the wall. But not one pair of mine in the lot.
“What! That you?” She said, pulling down the edge of her slinky black negligee.
I was charged with great emotion, seeing her spread out there in our old bed, seeing her unchanged not a jot in all the years I had been gone. Not one wrinkle, not one gray hair, not one bump or wart or blemish. She was her old skinny self with a few new appealing curves, her tongue still as sharp as her pointy elbows.
Before I could answer her, Nestor with all the juice of his youth dried out of him, limped into the room – where was his forth leg? – and gave me a steady look and a short sniff. Sniff sniff, like a sneeze that had fallen asleep; then he turned about and limped out the door as if I were not there, had never lived there, would never again live there.
“Nestor,” I cried, “It’s me.”
Not a glance me way. He may be deaf, I thought, seeing him slouch off like an old man with a missing leg, en plus. Age and loss. Twin themes I had thought would never visit me.
“Yes, it’s me come home,” I said, as she rose from the bed and wrapped about her a great green house coat which covered her from foot to neck – her head sticking out like a white bean squeezed from its pod.
“Returned home like the faithful sailor you are. Away for a thousand years and never a post card.”
“It’s a long and odd story, my dear, and one I’m eager to tell.”
“The world may be all ears but I’m not,” she said. “Your berth’s been taken, sailor, so cast off.”
She was her same wonderful biting self but with a decidedly new and attractive twist. Her once long and sharp toe nails were now trim and shaded rose. Her feet, peeking out from under the train of her robe, usually rough and dry like barnacles, were presently smooth and, dare I say, creamy. Dare I say, fetching!
Continued at Literarian. All of the above are close but no Segar. Here's the real deal:
Segar satirized cartoonists as seen in this reprint from Nemo #3 (October 1983). To read Bill Blackbeard on Segar in that issue, go Inside Jeff Overturf's Head.
After Segar died of liver disease in 1938 at age 43, his strip was continued by Tom Sims, Doc Winner, Bill Zaboly, Bud Sagendorf, Hy Eisman and Bobby London, who did the strip from 1986 until he was fired from King Features in 1992. London said, "Segar was, as far as my career, as far as making a decision to be a professional cartoonist, Segar was the seminal influence in my career."
Here's the controversial Bobby London finale with misunderstandings that ensued after Olive Oyl received a toy doll from the Home Shopping Network.
Continued at Literarian. All of the above are close but no Segar. Here's the real deal:
Popeye lifts Elzie Segar.
Segar satirized cartoonists as seen in this reprint from Nemo #3 (October 1983). To read Bill Blackbeard on Segar in that issue, go Inside Jeff Overturf's Head.
After Segar died of liver disease in 1938 at age 43, his strip was continued by Tom Sims, Doc Winner, Bill Zaboly, Bud Sagendorf, Hy Eisman and Bobby London, who did the strip from 1986 until he was fired from King Features in 1992. London said, "Segar was, as far as my career, as far as making a decision to be a professional cartoonist, Segar was the seminal influence in my career."
Here's the controversial Bobby London finale with misunderstandings that ensued after Olive Oyl received a toy doll from the Home Shopping Network.
Popeye waves goodbye.
Labels: bill blackbeard, bobby london, gelman, koons, marschall, nemo, overturf, popeye, sagendorf, segar, sims, tuten, zaboly
¶ 11:22 AM 0 comments
