Popeye

Popeye the Sailor is a famous comic strip character, later featured in popular animated cartoons. He was created by Elzie Crisler Segar and first appeared in the King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17 1929. Popeye is an independent sailor with a unique way of speaking, muscular forearms, and an ever-present corncob pipe. His strange, humorous, and often supernatural adventures take him all over the world, and place him in conflict with enemies such as the Sea Hag and King Zlobbo of Brutopia.

Related Topics:
Comic strip - Cartoon - Elzie Crisler Segar - King Features - January 17 - 1929

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The plot lines in the animated cartoons tended to be simpler. A villain, usually Bluto (later renamed Brutus), makes a move on his "sweetie", Olive Oyl. The bad guy then clobbers Popeye until he eats spinach, which gives him superhuman strength.

Related Topics:
Bluto - Olive Oyl - Spinach

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Although Popeye is short, odd-looking, belligerent, and has only one eye, many consider him a precursor to the superheroes who would eventually come to dominate the world of comic books. Some observers of popular culture point out that the fundamental character of Popeye, paralleling that of another 1930s icon, Superman, is very close to the traditional view of how America sees itself as a nation: possessing uncompromising moral standards and only resorting to force when threatened, or when he "can't stands no more" bad behavior from an antagonist. This theory is directly reinforced in certain cartoons, when Popeye defeats his foe while an American patriotic song such as "The Stars and Stripes Forever" plays on the soundtrack. Popeye also expresses American individualism. "I yam what I yam, and tha's all I yam."

Related Topics:
Superhero - Comic book - Superman - The Stars and Stripes Forever

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Such has been Popeye's cultural impact that the medical profession sometimes refer to the biceps bulge symptomatic of a tendon rupture as the "Popeye muscle" http://www.aafp.org/afp/980215ap/fongemie.html http://www.guideline.gov/summary/summary.aspx?view_id=1&doc_id=3694 (notice however that Popeye has pronounced brachioradialis muscles of his forearms, rather than biceps).

Related Topics:
Biceps - Symptom - Tendon - Brachioradialis - Forearm

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