Popeye and Bela Zaboly

I don't know of any way to get hold of those. I'd love to be able to -- but even more, I'd like to get hold of pre-Popeye Thimble Theatre. But -- fat chance.

Quack, Don

Pre-Popeye Thimble Theater would be excellent to read as well! What's the problem? No interest? Legal tangles?

Since I presume that Hearst/King Features still owns the rights to Popeye, why doesn't someone contact Hearst/King Features and ask?

"It vouldn't hoirt."

My guess is, nobody thinks they could sell enough copies.

Quack, Don

In browsing through my local Borders, I see- figuratively, tons of reprint books of Japanese Magna's, and, DC & Marvel reprint books as well.
These books wouldn't be out there is there wasn't a market for them.
I'm sure that Hearst has a paperback publishing company in it's "stable."
Popeye, even though no has made a new animated 'toon of him in years, is still very popular. Otherwise Hearst/King Features wouldn't still be syndicating the the strip. So it must be short sighted marketing, as Don's last comment would seem to indicate.

I read somewhere years ago that Popeye was King's #1 merchandising property. But that doesn't mean there's likely to be a market for Thimble Theatre before he even appeared in it.

Also, it took Fantagraphics, a specialty publisher of quality comics, to find the market in old Popeye comic strips. King simply doesn't do them on its own, despite the fact that they're sitting on a huge pile of high-quality material, because it's not equipped to market it to the specialty audience in old comics.

And even Fantagraphics isn't all that likely to see the audience appeal in post-Segar Popeye, no matter now many people like us might want to see it.

It's easy for guys like you and me to see audience appeal in things we like. It's a lot harder to convince a marketing executive there's any. And the worst of it is -- he's probably right.

Quack, Don

The irony is, I discovered the comic-strip version of Popeye by way of a reprint in the Charles Schulz paperback biography "Charlie Brown and Charlie Schulz" when I was a lad. (The book reprints several strips that were influential to Sparky.) This book had reprinted a 1940 Sunday strip that made me realize how brilliant Popeye was and how much more interesting the strip version was to me over the animated cartoon. It was only years later, after I'd purchased and devoured all of the Segar Fantagraphics books, that I realized that the reprint strip in the Schulz book was, in fact, a Bela Zaboly creation! That's why it's particularly interesting to me. I'll see if I can hunt some down via microfilm.

The irony is, I discovered the comic-strip version of Popeye by way of a reprint in the Charles Schulz paperback biography "Charlie Brown and Charlie Schulz" when I was a lad. (The book reprints several strips that were influential to Sparky.) This book had reprinted a 1940 Sunday strip that made me realize how brilliant Popeye was and how much more interesting the strip version was to me over the animated cartoon. It was only years later, after I'd purchased and devoured all of the Segar Fantagraphics books, that I realized that the reprint strip in the Schulz book was, in fact, a Bela Zaboly creation! That's why it's particularly interesting to me. I'll see if I can hunt some down via microfilm.

I'm also a big fan of Bud Sagendorf, whose stuff you can read in any Dell or Gold Key Popeye comic book. But your mention of the Popeye cartoons reminds me that Popeye is possibly uniquely blessed in that not only has he been continued in comics by top talents -- there's also a top-notch classic version in cartoons. The Famous Studios ones weren't so wonderful, but the Fleischer ones are.

Quack, Don

The irony is, I discovered the comic-strip version of Popeye by way of a reprint in the Charles Schulz paperback biography "Charlie Brown and Charlie Schulz" when I was a lad. (The book reprints several strips that were influential to Sparky.) This book had reprinted a 1940 Sunday strip that made me realize how brilliant Popeye was and how much more interesting the strip version was to me over the animated cartoon. It was only years later, after I'd purchased and devoured all of the Segar Fantagraphics books, that I realized that the reprint strip in the Schulz book was, in fact, a Bela Zaboly creation! That's why it's particularly interesting to me. I'll see if I can hunt some down via microfilm.