Elzie Crisler Segar (;
Charles M. Schulz said of Segar's work: "I think Popeye was a perfect comic strip, consistent in drawing and humor". Carl Barks described Segar as "the unbridled genius as far as I was concerned".
Early life
Segar was born on December 8, 1894, and raised in Chester, Illinois, a small town near the Mississippi River. The son of Erma Irene (Crisler) and Amzi Andrews Segar, a handyman, his earliest work experiences included assisting his father in house painting and paper hanging. Skilled at playing drums, he also provided musical accompaniment to films and vaudeville acts in the local theater, where he was eventually given the job of film projectionist He said that after work he "lit up the oil lamps about midnight and worked on the course until 3 a.m." During this time, Segar also began studying the work of cartoonists that he would later cite as influences on his work, including Rube Goldberg, George McManus and George Herriman (especially Herriman's strip Stumble Inn).
Asked how to say his name, he told The Literary Digest it was "SEE-gar". He commonly signed his work simply Segar or E. Segar above a drawing of a cigar.
Early work
Segar moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he met Richard F. Outcault, the creator of The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown. Outcault encouraged him and introduced him at the Chicago Herald. Looping the Loop was a comic strip that gave a whimsical take on the events in Chicago's "Loop" district. "Looping the Loop" made jokes about such issues as silent movies, plays, and the changing seasons; it proved popular with the Herald's readers.
Thimble Theatre, Sappo and Popeye
Evening American managing editor William Curley thought Segar could succeed in New York, so he sent him to King Features Syndicate, where Segar worked for many years. King Features asked Segar to create a comic strip to replace Midget Movies by Ed Wheelan, who had recently resigned from the syndicate. Segar created Thimble Theatre for the New York Journal, as the replacement for Wheelan's strip. The Thimble Theatre strip made its debut on December 19, 1919, featuring the characters Olive Oyl, Castor Oyl and Harold Hamgravy, whose name was quickly shortened in the strip to simply "Ham Gravy". They were the strip's leads for about a decade. In one storyline, the characters encountered a superhuman "tough guy" named Harry Hardegg, who was able to break a moving buzz saw with his head. Comics historian Bill Blackbeard has described Harry Hardegg as a "prototype" for Popeye.
On January 17, 1929, when Castor Oyl needed a mariner to navigate his ship to Dice Island, Castor picked up a weatherbeaten sailor named Popeye in the docks. Popeye's first line in the strip, upon being asked if he was a sailor, was "'Ja think I'm a cowboy?" It is believed Segar remembered a tough laborer named Frank "Rocky" Fiegel who was always getting in fights but also gave out candy and treats to children, including a young Segar. At first Segar intended Popeye to be a once-off character, but after large numbers of newspaper readers wrote in requesting the character's return, Segar reintroduced Popeye as a full-time regular in August 1929, eventually enabling the sailor to become the focal point of the strip.
Legacy and reprints
Segar was among the first cartoonists to combine humorous situations with long-running adventures.
A revival of interest in Segar's creations began with Woody Gelman's Nostalgia Press. Robert Altman's live-action film Popeye (1980) is adapted from E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre comic strip. The screenplay by Jules Feiffer was based directly on Gelman's Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye the Sailor, a hardcover reprint collection of 1936–37 Segar strips published in 1971 by Nostalgia Press. In 2006, Fantagraphics published the first of a six-volume book set reprinting all Thimble Theatre daily and Sunday strips from 1928 to 1938, beginning with the adventure that introduced Popeye.
An Italian comics version of Popeye (renamed Braccio di Ferro), with some of characters changed and others added, was published from 1963 to 1994 in Italy by Editoriale Metro.
In 1971, the National Cartoonists Society created the Elzie Segar Award in his honor. According to the Society's website, the award was "presented to a person who has made a unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning." The NCS board of directors chose the first winners, while King Features selected recipients in later years. Honorees have included Charles Schulz, Bil Keane, Al Capp, Bill Gallo and Mort Walker. The award was discontinued in 1999.
In 2012, cartoonists Roger Langridge and Bruce Ozella teamed to revive the spirit of Segar in a 12-issue limited series, Popeye, published by IDW.
In 2018, Sunday Press Books published Thimble Theatre & The Pre-Popeye Comics of E.C. Segar, collecting Segar's early comic strip work, primarily the Thimble Theatre Sunday pages published between 1925 and 1930.
Timeline
thumb|right|200px|E. C. Segar's Looping the Loop (1918)
{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|-
! Title
! Start date
! End date
|-
| Charlie Chaplin's Comic Capers
| March 1916
| April 1917
|-
| The Mistakes of Mr. Muddle
| March 1917 ?
| April 1918
|-
| And They Get By With It
| March 1917 ?
| April 1918
|-
| Barry the Boob
| April 1917
| April 1918
|-
| Looping the Loop
| June 1918
| December 1919
|-
| Thimble Theatre (Popeye)
| December 1919
| October 1938
|-
| The Five-Fifteen (Sappo)
| December 1920
| October 1938
|}
Popeye & Friends Character Trail
In 1977, Segar's hometown of Chester, Illinois, named a park in his honor. The park contains a six-foot-tall bronze statue of Popeye. The annual Popeye Picnic, a weekend-long event that celebrates the character with a parade, film festival and other activities, is held the first weekend after Labor Day. In 2006, Chester launched the "Popeye & Friends Character Trail", which links a series of statues of Segar's characters located throughout town. Each stands on a base inscribed with the names of donors who contributed to its cost and is unveiled and dedicated during the Popeye Picnic. The 2006 debut sculpture of hamburger-loving Wimpy stands in Gazebo Park. A statue of Olive Oyl, Swee'Pea and the Jeep, located near the Randolph County Courthouse, followed in 2007. In 2008, a Bluto statue was dedicated at the corner of Swanwick and W. Holmes Streets, in front of Buena Vista Bank. The 2009 statue of Castor Oyl and Bernice the Whiffle Hen stands in front of Chester Memorial Hospital. One additional statue has been unveiled each year.
{|class="wikitable"
|-
! style="width:33px;"|Year
! style="width:210px;"|Character(s)
! style="width:210px;"|Location
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2010
|SeaHag/Bernard
|McDonald's/Walmart
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2011
|Cole Oyl
|Chester Public Library
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2012
|Alice the Goon
|Chester Center
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2013
|Poopdeck Pappy
|Cohen Complex
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2014
|Prof. Watasnozzle
|Chester High School
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2015
|RoughHouse
|Reids' Harvest House
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2016
|Nephews-Peepeye/Poopeye/Pipeye/Pupeye
|Chester Grade School
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2017
|King Blozo
|Chester City Hall
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2018
|Nana Oyl
|Manor at Craig's Farm
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2019
|Popeye's Pups
|Chester Firehouse
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2019
|Sherlock & Segar
|Baskerville Hall on Swanwick Street
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2020
|Toar
|St Nicholas Landmark
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| 2021
|Harold Hamgravy
|Randolph County Courthouse
|}
Spinach Can Collectibles/Popeye Museum is located in the center of the city (Opera House).
On December 8, 2009, Google celebrated Segar's 115th birthday with a Google Doodle of Popeye. The doodle used Popeye's body as the 'g', had 'oogl', drawn to resemble Segar's drawing style, and a spinach can as the 'e', and featured Popeye punching the 'oogl' to cause the spinach to fly at him through the air.
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
- Official site for Popeye & Friends Character Trail
- "E.C. Segar" by Ed Black
- "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Zak Sally Minneapolis City Pages
- Lambiek Comiclopedia article about E.C. Segar
- E.C. Segar Gallery
- "Popeye's Pop EC Segar"
- E.C. Segar's 115th Birthday Doodle in Google Logo Museum