First appearance of Popeye in 1929.

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.