What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? And what’s going on in Thimble Theatre? February – May 2024

It’s a bonus week for Emi Burdge and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye, plot recaps of which you can always find here. The past several weeks Randy Milholland has had a specific story going on in the Sunday installments of the mother strip, too, so that’s worth a quick recap. And now, on to where the stories are, as of mid-May, 2024:

Olive and Popeye, plus Thimble Theatre.

29 February – 16 May 2024.

Olive’s story first. She and her crew had been chosen to be tutor to Hel, Charon’s daughter. Hel has a bit of a problem shuttling souls to the other side in that she can’t perceive any of them. Olive Oyl, since her brush with death at the hands of a titanic cave leech, hasn’t been able to not perceive them. The Soul Full Cave, then is the place to start looking. Olive impresses Hel with her ability to punch out cave leeches. Hel, Olive Oyl, and Petunia get to the altar-y thing just in time for a gigantic sea serpent to take up 80% of the cave’s volume, by volume. So this looks like a problem unless you peek ahead a week and learn the sea monster’s a friend of Hel’s.

Emi Burdge’s Olive and Popeye for the 7th of May, 2024. Oh, hey, I’ve played that pinball! It’s a good one.

Meanwhile, Popeye’s story. O G Wotasnozzle freed Popeye and Pommy from the force bubble which kept them at CEO Bunzo’s mercy. Popeye and Pommy go in search of the hiding Bunzo. They don’t find him, but a mis-aimed laser blast from Bunzo opens a cave and drops them into the place where they might just find Plaidfood’s treasure.

Missing Bunzo’s aim: Mama Katzenjammer. She, along with Hans and Fritz and the rest of the cast of the venerable comic strip we didn’t notice when it ended, had been held captive by Bunzo’s robots. But Poopdeck and Whaler Joe had put aside their differences for a higher purpose: punching robots. And along the way they freed the natives of the island. So Mama was ready to bring her clobbering-mit-un-roller-pin skills to bear on the Bunzo problem.

Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 2nd of May, 2024. I’m only a little disappointed not to see Hans und Fritz having their revenge against Bunzo, but it does make more thematic sense for Mama to be the force restoring order.

The rescued population includes the third Katzenjammer Kid, who’d been in the strip in like 1887 and then vanished to wherever Jeremy’s older brother from Zits went. He hadn’t even been a trivia question until a Sunday Popeye strip last year when Randy Milholland gave him an appearance. This should explain why Mike Curtis asked Charles Ettinger to work up a modern character sheet for George Herriman’s Musical Mose.

Speaking of Sundays. Randy Milholland has been doing a story in the Sundays. This story, “Enuff’s Fisticuffs!” as teased last year features Professor Kilph, who went from simply setting up boxing matches for Popeye to villainously setting up boxing matches for Popeye. His newest scheme: ruining Popeye’s life. The plan: he bribes Sweethaven Mayor John Sappo (back in the day, Elzie Segar’s side hustle) to ban all fighting in town. And then waits for Popeye to come in, and then ta-da, jail cell Popeye won’t feel he can bust out of.

Except Popeye, setting a good model for Swee’Pea and the other children, refuses to fight, and doesn’t mind not fighting. So Kilph sets up an illegal underground fighting tournament and, in costume, tells Olive Oyl, Popeye, and Wimpy how there’ll be money for the winner. The panel after Popeye declares you won’t see him at no illegal fights, we see Wimpy introducing “El Puño Verde” to the ring.

Wimpy insists, even to Poopdeck’s face, that this fighter — who has Popeye’s jawline, pipe, arms, and legs — is not Popeye. But when El Puño Verde mops the floor with everybody, including Spinocules, a spider-eyed monster fed on Spincoal, the fossilized spinach that gave us a Bud Sagendorf story, everyone knows what’s up. They’re wrong: El Puño is Olive Oyl, and who saw that coming?

Randy Milholland’s Popeye for the 19th of May, 2024. I was genuinely surprised that it was Olive Oyl rather than Popeye, despite the excellent character sense it makes. I was also surprised that Olive Oyl could hold four tomatoes in her mouth; she was really counting on not taking any hits to the jaw there.

Tough to imagine this going much past Kilph getting his comeuppance and once that uppance has come the Sunday strips will probably go back to spot jokes. But if they don’t, I won’t complain, and we’ll see here what comes of them. Check back in somewhere around mid-August and I should have an update for you.

Next Week!

Alley Oop and companions are trapped in a time loop that ends with the Earth blown up! How many times will it repeat before someone remembers they have a time machine and should be able to go to before the loop starts, maybe stop all this nonsense from happening? So you know my subject line question for next week, when I ask and answer What’s Going On In Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop … unless something changes the timeline?