Segar, Elzie Crisler

Elzie Segar, (born Dec. 8, 1894, Chester, Ill., U.S.—died Oct. 13, 1938, Santa Monica, Calif.), American cartoonist and creator of “Popeye,” a comic strip in which the main character, a roughhewn sailor who gained immense strength from eating spinach, became an international folk hero.

As a young man Segar worked as a house painter, sign painter, and motion-picture projectionist. After having many of his cartoons rejected, he took a correspondence course in cartooning, then went to Chicago, where the cartoonist Richard F. Outcault used his influence to get him a job on the Herald, drawing “Charlie Chaplin’s Comic Capers.” The paper ceased publication in 1917, and Segar went to New York, where he persuaded the King Features Syndicate to accept his ideas for a new strip, which appeared in 1919 as “Thimble Theatre.” Initially the strip dealt largely with the fantastic adventures of Olive Oyl, a gawky old maid; Caster Oyl, her foolish brother; and Ham Gravy, her boyfriend. Popeye, the dominating character of the strip, did not appear until January 1929. A long-term romance ensued between Popeye and Olive Oyl, with Popeye overpowering his rivals with the help of spinach. A variety of characters entered the scene, perhaps the most notable being J. Wellington Wimpy, an artful sponger with a mania for hamburgers. The characters also appeared in hundreds of animated cartoons produced by Max Fleischer. Popeye was so popular and so closely associated with spinach that, within six years of his appearance, a statue of him was erected in the central square of Crystal City, Texas, an important spinach-growing centre.