What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Who is this Bunzo character? December 2023 – February 2024

The current lead villain in the Popeye side of Emi Burdge and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye is Bunzo, whom you remember from … 1931. It was mentioned in the strip but you might have missed. Way back during Herbert Hoover’s presidency, when Popeye and gang first journeyed to King Blozo’s kingdom, Bunzo was General in charge of the army or whatnot. And wanted the kingdom for himself, certainly more than Blozo wanted it, so there we go. Then it turned out running kingdoms is hard, especially when you have Blozo and the people who put up with being ruled by Blozo on your side. Since then, the Popeye wiki tells me, he’s made other appearances like in that comic book series from twelve years ago and in the current story.

So this should catch you up to late February 2024 in the Olive and Popeye side strip. There haven’t been any continuity-heavy bits of anything going on in the main Sunday Thimble Theatre comics. If you’re reading this after about May 2024, there’s probably a more up-to-date recap here. If there’s not, there’s not. Life is complicated, you know?

Olive and Popeye.

5 December 2023 – 26 February 2024.

Popeye, following the map of Plaidfoot the Pirate, had just got captured by an unbreakable bubble. O G Wotasnozzle apologizes; he had no choice in the matter. He was being compelled by Popeye’s greatest enemy … Bunzo.

Yes, it’s another archive pull for Randy Milholland. He includes a footnote giving the dates, very helpful if you have the Complete Segar Popeye reprints, less helpful if you have to dig around the Comics Kingdom archives. (The story should be coming up in the next year, though, if Comics Kingdom doesn’t blow up everything in its redesign later this week.) Blozo, realizing power without responsibility is the best, has moved into CEO work, in the business of selling himself. And it’ll help him get going if he has, say, the ancient treasure of Plaidfoot the Pirate. And what can stop him, as long as Popeye is trapped inside Wotasnozzle’s unbreakable bubble?

Well, there’s Wotasnozzle breaking the bubble. And giving the bad news that Bunzo is searching for treasure using both Wotasnozzle’s robots and enslaved townspeople. Who can punch their way through all this trouble, besides Popeye and Rip Haywire? Fortunately we have a Popeye on hand.

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Emi Burdge’s Olive and Popeye for the 6th of February, 2024. So far as I’m aware Charon and his family haven’t appeared in Popeye comics before, but, I mean, Popeye’s uncle is literally the Davey Jones of locker fame, and there’s another story (printed by the Lost Popeye Zine) that meets up with Jupiter Pluvius so you know, who knows?

Meanwhile in Olive’s story … all those many ghosts she keeps seeing let her know that the “old boatman” meant to escort them to the other side has disappeared. The gang find a cloaked boatman figure wandering around the harbor, though. Olive runs up to ask Charon what’s going on and … gets yelled at for grabbing Hel, a young woman who turns out to be Charon’s granddaughter. He’s on vacation, and she’s filling in to build character and whatnot. But she hasn’t seen a single ghost since taking up the oar.

Olive can not believe this. Petunia offers that maybe Hel will develop her own ghost sight. Hel decides that Olive Oyl will mentor her in the ghost-seeing and managing business, and we’ll just see what Olive makes of that, then.

Next Week!

A certain time-travelling caveman decides to go and invent bestseller authorship and the kind of unthinkable, unreasoning wealth Bunzo hopes for. It’s Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop next Tuesday, all going well. See you then.

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Who’s the guy capturing Popeye in a bubble? September – December 2023

Don’t know yet. Popeye and his gang arrived on an island, in search of Plaidfoot’s Treasure. The party’s arrival was noticed by the robots serving some mysterious, not-yet-seen figure. We haven’t seen their face or an obvious gimmick. It’s not just my lack here; from the comments others haven’t reached a consensus. The Grand Archivist is the only guess people have and this doesn’t feel like his vibe to me. And, we’ve seen, Randy Milholland is willing to draw on the entire roster of every Popeye villain ever in the comic strip, cartoons, or old time radio for his appearances. We’ll see.

So this should catch you up to early December 2023 in Emi Burdge and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye. If you’re reading this after March 2024 there’s likely a more up-to-date plot recap here. You’ll also find all my recaps of the various Olive And Popeye strips there, as I try to become the world’s premiere Popeye blogger against maybe competition? Enjoy, please.

Olive and Popeye.

12 September – 5 December 2023.

Last time you’ll recall, Olive Oyl has decided to help the ghosts she now sees all over the world. It turns out there are a lot of ghosts around Sweethaven. And we spend a good bit of time chatting with ones who mostly met their ends in ridiculous ways.

This coincides with a series of the Olive strips drawn by Ryan Milholland. Milholland’s been drawing the Thursday, Popeye-focused strips, as well as the Sunday strips for Thimble Theatre Presents Popeye. But for the gap between Shadia Amin leaving — in late August, with Olive and company declaring they’re going on an adventure — and Emi Burdge taking over in early October Milholland drew both sides of the strip. (I don’t know how far ahead the scripts were written, or how they were coordinated during the transition.)

Emi Burdge’s Olive and Popeye for the 14th of November, 2023. I agree, this sure seems like it’s got to be Charon they’re talking about, and the character acknowledge as much today. But is it? … Probably something sillier than that. Does it have any link to Popeye and his adventure and the mysterious figure there? I don’t know. Seems imaginable, but I’m not sure how.

From talking with the many, many, many ghosts wanting her attention Olive finds a mystery: the “old boatman” who’d escort them to the other side has disappeared. And the ghosts are desperate. Also, Olive’s desperate for a night’s sleep. One sympathizes. Also along the way we the readers learn that Cylinda Oyl can see and talk to ghosts, something that Mae can’t. That or she’s just saying that every now and then and got lucky.

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Meanwhile on Popeye’s side of things. He and his fathers — Poopdeck Pappy and Whaler Joe — meet up with Pommy. Sir Pomeroy, 10th Earl of Vauxhall, I’m told by the Popeye wikia was a regular adventure partner back in the 1950s, when Ralph Stein wrote Thimble Theatre. He’s new to me too. Pommy’s investigating, first, a town rampaged by some kind of thing. Also the map to Plaidfoot’s Treasure. Plaidfoot the Pirate said it was a treasure sacred to a race of easily-fooled monsters he swiped it from.

So here’s where they’re noticed by that shadowy figure mentioned above. The figure knows who Popeye is and that he’ll ruin everything. Also the figure has Professor O G Wotasnozzle in captivity. And some of Wotasnozzle’s rather cute robots serving him. The figure sends the robots, who’ve captured Popeye in a bubble. And that’s where we stand, this week.

Next Week!

Journey through time, space, and history-warping insects with Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop … unless something happens to change the timeline and the schedule!

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Who is Patcheye and why should we care? June – September 2023

Among the characters brought back to Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s twice-a-week Olive and Popeye comic is Patcheye. Patcheye is a pirate ghost, introduced by Bud Sagendorf into the comic book back in 1963. Bud Sagendorf imported Patcheye into the main strip in a 1971 story. Comics Kingdom conveniently reran the whole story again late last year/early this year. So it’s easy to catch the whole thing if you want to read it yourself and have a subscription.

Patcheye’s deal is that the ghost of Popeye’s great-great-great-gran’pappy, waiting for a boy in the family to want to be a pirate. Swee’Pea declared that wish and so we got a couple weeks of Patcheye training Swee’Pea into piracy. Patcheye puts together a crew of Swee’Pea and Olive Oyl and in a rowboat takes on a battleship. It then becomes a story of getting Swee’Pea out of jail on the piracy charge. Patcheye then disappears from the story, returning only to leave in disgust when Swee’Pea is spanked as a naughty little boy instead of hung as a pirate. An underwhelming use of a neat idea? That’s the Thimble Theatre Plot Promise.

So this should catch you up to mid-September 2023 in Popeye’s comic strip adventures. Most of the action is in Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s twice-a-week Olive and Popeye. I guess I’m doing a follow-up to this around December 2023, that’ll someday be at this link. If all goes well. Until then, here’s what has gone on.

Olive and Popeye.

20 June – 12 September 2023.

Last time, in the Shadia Amin Olive-focused side of the strip, Olive Oyl and Petunia (Whaler Joe’s daughter) were spelunking in the Soulful Cave. (Whaler Joe is the guy who raised Popeye after Poopdeck fled and Popeye’s Mom, Irene, was lost at sea.) But Olive Oyl got attacked by a giant leech, and Petunia pulled her body out. Her dead body.

Luckily, as Linden (the Sea Hag’s intern) explains over the phone, it’s the Soul Full cave. It’s chock full of all kinds of soul and soul-location-management tools. Petunia’s able to find an altar of some kind that puts Olive’s soul back in … well, Petunia’s body. But Olive Oyl’s able to get this sorted out fast.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 25th of July, 2023. Amin’s page here. Much of the story has been in a lighthearted, bouncy tone for stuff about death and unquiet ghosts and all that. (For example, Olive Oyl gets back in her right body by threatening the Soul Altar Or Whatever with a hammer.) This is one of the quieter panels and unusually affecting. A bit of this sells the whole drama.

But not without a change. Olive Oyl can see the spirits of the dead around her. Not just the ones who won’t shut up being around, like Patcheye. She decides she needs to convey messages from lost souls to the living. And she puts together a gang to sail around Sweethaven and take care of this. Mae as bodyguard, Sutra as the person who knows Linden in case of annoying occult business, Petunia as marine biologist, Cylinda Oyl as assistant. (Cylinda Oil had been Castor Oyl’s wife but was written out of the strip in 1928, that is, before Popeye was introduced to it.)

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On the Popeye side of things, there’s also an expedition going together. It has a less clear purpose. Mostly, Whaler Joe has been missing the sea, despite the pleasantness of Sweethaven and being with Popeye again. So they’re setting out on a little journey to see Sir Pomeroy, 10th Earl of Vauxhall, who I never heard of before this either. Turns out that apart from a guest appearance in the Bobby London era, he’s been out of Popeye since writer Ralph Stein left the strip in August 1959. He apparently was a British explorer with exaggerated mannerisms, which I’m sure hasn’t dated one bit since the end of the Anti-British National Liberation War/Malayan Emergency.

That’s the big development. The rest of the Popeye side of the strip has been about roping all of the sailor man’s family into a bunch that’s staying at Sweethaven. This includes Poopdeck Pappy, and Pappy’s mother, Popeye’s mother Irene, Popeye’s aunt Agnes Jones. Maybe even Agnes’s husband, Davy Jones, the spirit of the sea.

And in the main, Sunday-only Thimble Theatre Presents Popeye strip? Nothing much. Some fun one-off gags, with a nice mix of characters we know well and characters we haven’t seen since Herbert Hoover was President. Even an appearance by the long-forgotten Other Katzenjammer Kid. So that’s all fun but nothing that doesn’t explain itself. Except that a bunch of the Sundays have featured the wealthy Mr Kilph, last seen in the 1930s. He started as a philanthropist setting up Popeye boxing matches. He mutated into a villain setting up Popeye boxing matches, possibly because Elzie Segar forgot what Kilph’s deal was. Or because rich villains are fun to write and fun to beat. I don’t have any way of knowing whether Milholland is planning to go somewhere with this, but we’ve seen he is willing to do stories in the mother strip.

Next Week!

Who yanked out the plug at the center of the galaxy so everything could drain into the black hole? And how will Doc Wonmug, Alley Oop, and Ooola avoid responsibility for it? Also: hey, how about a trip to Creepy Animate Plant Island and some moss that makes you immortal but really fast? It’s time to look at Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop if the spacetime continuum doesn’t get all broken yet again.

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Is Olive Oyl dead? March – June 2023

Well, probably not forever, no. But a development in Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye has seen her body limp on the ground, with a ghostly form standing over it. This is what convinced me I needed to do a recap of the last couple months of story there. All my plot recaps for the twice-a-week Olive and Popeye strip should be here, however long I run them. If enough keeps happening, I should do another plot recap somewhere around September 2023, unless plans change.

Olive and Popeye.

28 March – 20 June 2023.

So the big jaw-dropping development came in a pair of Tuesday strips, ones done by Shadia Amin, starting the 6th of June. Olive and Petunia are on some expedition in a cave — Popeye wanted a break — and some giant wormy monster grabs Olive from above. Petunia beats it off with a stick, and it drops Olive Oyl’s body. But she’s … ghastly?

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 13th of June, 2023. Shadia Amin’s work. Uh … congratulations to Olive Oyl for achieving the goal of being impossible for Popeye to hit on two counts?

One of the magic cave leeches ripped her soul out of her body. Should be something they can put back. Also, while there’s no reason to think the comic will do this? It suggests that it could do a body-swap story, a kind of story that as far as I know hasn’t been done in Popeye before. Could be fun. (Yes, of course I remember the Jack Kinney cartoon I Yam Wot I Yamnesia. That one sure acts like a body-swap story, but the ending makes sense only if it’s a personality-change story … I’m not sure. It’s a Jack Kinney cartoon, of course the logic flies off the rails.) Anyway it’s at least rare for Popeye and conceivably a first for the comic strip.

Besides that … well, it is hard to say anything’s quite so important, is it? A lot of it has been Popeye’s surprisingly large family for an orphan getting settled in together. Poopdeck Pappy and Whaler Joe continue their tussle for the affections of Swee’Pea. And he sees the advantages in having two jealous grandfathers. Popeye’s mother Irene, Aunt Jones, and father Whaler Joe are keen to spoil Swee’Pea, but only to a point. He’s still figuring out what his bounds are.

The other development, the one that would be the lead if Olive Oyl weren’t ghostificated, involves Brutus. That may need some explaining. For the 1960s cartoons King Features created Brutus, a character legally distinct from Bluto, to be Popeye’s nemesis. This because King Features didn’t realize that Bluto had appeared in the comic strip first, and therefore was not the property of Paramount Cartoon Studios. In the late 2000s Hy Eisman decided that Bluto and Brutus were brothers and both could appear in the strip. The difference between them has settled on Bluto being the aggressive one, and Brutus being sort of well-meant but hapless.

Brutus and Olive Oyl have the idea Olive’s cousin Sutra Oyl (one of Bobby London’s characters) and Linden (Randy Millholland’s character) would be a cute couple. Linden is the Sea Hag’s intern. And, turns out, they do like each other. Nice to see.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 23rd of May, 2023. Shadia Amin’s work. This one strip also does a good job explaining how Brutus in the comic strip works.

This by the way adds to the count of story comics featuring lesbian relationships ahead of Mary Worth.

Besides all that, there was an eight-week ongoing story in Randy Milholland’s Sunday-only Thimble Theater comics. This story, “The Secret of Goonhalla”, saw all Goons everywhere — every kind, including Sea Goons, Moon Goons, and the off-brand Goons from the Gene Deitch cartoons — kidnapped by Trivicus, “cosmically appointed collector of all obscure knowledge”. He wants the location of Goonhalla, a thing nobody has ever heard of before. This because Trivicus’s boss, the Grand Archivist, keeps making up stuff for Trivicus to find. It’s to get his underling out of his hair, but Trivicus keeps finding the named things somehow. Alice the Goon and Popeye work together to snag Trivicus silly, and foil the whole plan. And, Trivicus and the Grand Archivist get assigned to organizing the Library of the Goons. Or, Goonhalla Library, as they’re naming it. So Goonhalla’s been found after all. I like the logic of this punch line.

Next Week!

It’s the other comedic serial story strip! Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop takes on banking and the black hole eating the galaxy! I’ll share what I know about this in a week, all going well. Take care.

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Is it enough to make a regular feature of this? December 2022 – March 2023

I don’t know that enough is happening in Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye to make it a regular part of my What’s Going On In … writing. I’ve limited these columns to the story strips. And particularly the ones where the story is involved or long enough that a new reader would need months to catch up.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 14th of February, 2023. There happen to have been more plot-bearing strips in Milholland’s installments, run on Thursdays, than in Amin’s, run Tuesdays. This is not to slight Amin, just a side effect of what I’m trying here. But this makes a nice example of the scenarios that Amin likes illustrating. (Olive Oyl had failed to reply to Popeye’s text that he could put off the sea monster business if she wanted to see him tonight.)

Olive and Popeye has had stuff happen. Not so much action and adventure, although there’s a few with that. It’s rather a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern take on Olive and Popeye’s own life. One of the bits of action the past several months was Popeye having to beg off a date to go punch a sea monster, for example. With Milholland starting to do short stories in the Popeye Sunday strips perhaps between the two of these there’ll be enough for me.

Whatever does happen I’ll bundle all my Olive and Popeye plot recaps here. I’ll figure on doing at least one more of them, which should come around June of 2023, and we’ll see what follows from there.

Olive and Popeye.

27 December 2022 – 27 March 2023.

In the first several months of Olive and Popeye we mostly had characters get back together. This includes the return of Ham Gravy, one of the original cast of Thimble Theatre. He was set out as Olive Oyl’s beau, but couldn’t hold his own against the pillar of charisma and intrigue that is Castor Oyl. When Popeye took over the strip he didn’t have a chance.

And we also meet some new characters. Whaler Joe was, created by Elzie Segar himself back in 1931, as part of a newspaper feature explaining Popeye’s past. As far as I know he’s not been on-screen so he’s effectively a new character. Unmistakably new is his daughter Petunia. She’s an aspiring marine biologist who’s up for learning what Popeye knows of the sea. This is a lot of trouble with monsters and such.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 19th of January, 2023. Pappy is getting written a bit more sociopathic than I think is quite true to his character. But it’s being played so preposterous that it works for me.

Meanwhile Poopdeck Pappy wonders why Wimpy is being so nice to him and hanging around all the time. This is because Popeye’s paying him to keep Pappy away from Whaler Joe. Popeye’s not worried about his mother Irene or his Aunt Jones (wife of Davy “Locker” Jones) knowing him. They get along great, in fact, with the worst that happens digging out old photos of Popeye’s teen goth phase.

Still, Pappy is jealous and he won’t take any of the abundant good advice he gets to back off. I know it’s the mode of modern cartoons and comic strips to have emotionally aware characters. Still, when you think of how many Popeye adventures have depended on bonkers headgames it’s odd to see Olive and Popeye being mature. It fits well enough, moreso on Popeye, but still.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 16th of February, 2023. Boy is that a sweet comic, though. You do have to suppose Popeye was a difficult child, but also that he probably responded well to boundaries that made sense to him.

And it turns out Pappy and Whaler Joe knew each other anyway. Pappy had used a young, naive Whaler Joe as lackey on the first ship Joe ever sailed on. That ended when Pappy accidentally got Whaler Joe fired. It’s a gag solid enough that it feels more like a stroke of Dickensian plotting than a shrinking of the Thimble Theatre world. Pappy leaves, wondering why everyone treats him as the jerk. Whaler Joe is gracious and we learn Popeye’s taken up that same good grace.

Stuff’s been happening with Olive Oyl too, although I’m less sure there’s a story there. Some avoiding of the new flirtations by Ham Gravy (who, with Castor Oyl, had a fun five-week sequence in the Sunday Popeye strips failing to vanquish all, or any, of Popeye’s foes). Some getting-together with her family and with Petunia and offhandedly vanquishing Susie the Sea Nymph. Rolling her eyes and sneering at Bluto. Being nice to Brutus, and the Sea Hag’s intern, for a Pi Day strip. A lot of the stuff that would be the thing going on when an adventure starts. I don’t know that it’s going anywhere but it’s all fun to see.

Next Week!

I get serious about our favorite time-travelling cave people and how they encounter a claimant to the throne of Schenectady. Also the oceans. Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop gets some love from me next week, if things go to plan.

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Also, what is Olive and Popeye? September – December 2022

Happy end of the year! So, late this past summer, Comics Kingdom started to run a twice-a-week strip, Olive and Popeye. The strip, which has a daily-strip form, is done alternately by Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland. Milholland is the person who draws the Sunday-only Popeye strip. I don’t know how they’re coordinating the writing. I remember seeing Milholland tweet that both their strips were “canon”. I don’t know whether anyone said whether this is supposed to be in continuity with the Sunday Popeye. I doubt there’s going to be anything irreconcilable.

A couple weeks back I realized that while the Olive and Popeye strips stood alone, there was a continuity going. And things look like they’re putting a story together. I don’t know that this is going to be a new story strip in the way that the standard syndicated newspaper strips are. But, you know, I want to encourage Popeye re-entering the popular culture. And it’s easy to imagine without knowing and without hearing anyone suggest this is the case that doing a two-day-a-week strip is testing whether a full-time daily strip would be viable. So let me take one of my Tuesday slots and say stuff about a comic strip you might have had no idea existed.

Olive and Popeye.

30 August – 22 December 2022.

Olive Oyl leaves a canoodling session with Popeye to meet her brother Castor. He’s meeting up with his wife Cylinda, a character who hasn’t been in Thimble Theatre since before Popeye was introduced. She was written out in 1928, either running off to Hollywood or divorcing her unfaithful husband. It depends whether you read the daily or the Sunday strips. In any case it has to be a record for characters re-emerging from off stage. But she’s back and “a bat now”, according to Castor’s daughter Deezil. Deezil’s a character from the 1960s cartoons.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 6th of September, 2022. This might be Deezil’s first appearance since the King Features cartoons. It does establish just who her parents are, and how she’s a niece of Olive Oyl, which seems almost to violate the rules about how cartoon nieces and nephews work. From what I read of Cylinda Oil’s backstory I don’t see where she could have had a child, plausibly, unless somehow something happened to her while off-screen. But what are the odds of that?

Meanwhile, Popeye’s mother Irene(!) and his aunt Jones fly in to spend time with the family. His mother, it turns out and is footnoted, got introduced in an early-50s story. This makes sense of her appearance in that one Famous Studios cartoon. His aunt Jones is, by the way, married to Davy Jones, of Locker fame. She’d been introduced in the early 40s and neglected since then.

Then we get some slice-of-life stuff. Popeye’s mother and aunt bonding with him and Swee’Pea. Olive Oyl working out with a friend named Mae. Mae seems to be her rival from the 1936 short Never Kick A Woman. The woman was unnamed there, but “Mae” suggests both Mae West (a clear influence on the short) and Olive Oyl’s longtime voice actor Mae Questel. Poopdeck Pappy stopping in, wondering if Irene is still upset about all those times he ran off and such.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 22nd of September, 2022. So it turns out Popeye’s Mother was introduced in 1951 which I have never known or seen talked about. This may explain why she suddenly got an appearance in Popeye’s Pappy, that color yet racist Famous Studios cartoon remaking Goonland worse.

There’s some antics in the background too. A character that makes me think of Susie the Sea Nymph, a menace from the late 30s, emerges from the water a couple times but Olive Oyl easily foists her off. (Susie the Sea Nymph was in the story run a couple months ago in Comics Kingdom’s Vintage Thimble Theatre.) Popeye going off to foil the Sea Hag and dump some of his stress at his family situation on her. Also, Bluto and Brutus keep popping in to slight effect. Ham Gravy pokes around to see if Olive Oyl might be up for getting back together. Her sisters protect her from him. But Olive and her big-city cousin Sweet still get along mostly by fighting.

Popeye hires Wimpy to keep an eye on Pappy, and keep Pappy away from his mother. Wimpy offers that someone down by the docks is asking for him. It turns out to be Whaler Joe, Popeye’s guardian when Pappy and his mother were both missing. I had assumed Whaler Joe to be one of Randy Milholland’s creations for Popeye’s Cartoon Club. Turns out, no; he was Elzie Segar’s creation, for a 1931 newspaper promotional piece titled The Private Life of Popeye, his biography as imagined before there were any animated cartoons or much comic strip lore.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 8th of December, 2022. In Popeye’s defense, he’s been parenting Swee’Pea for nearly 75 years now and he hasn’t aged a day. The key element has to be ‘not looking at them’.

Well, Whaler Joe is in Sweehaven to see his daughter Petunia, who I belive is a new character here. At leas, the Popeye Wikia I use doesn’t mention her before. She was an infant when Popeye last saw her, when he was eighteen. We first see Petunia when she happens to ask Olive Oyl for help scaring off some men following her. Petunia’s hoping to be a marine biologist, much like all of us who were kids in the 80s did. But she’s got the help that her father and her big brother are sailors and I guess her great-uncle is Davy Jones. She’s thrilled to meet Popeye, and wants to know everything he’s experienced with sea monsters. Like, now.

And that’s where “Now” is in the comic strip! As I warned above, I’m not sure this is a story strip in the way that, like, Mary Worth is a story strip. But I’m willing to take at least one try at summarizing a strip that’s been a lot of reintroducing obscure characters. We’ll see if that ever needs doing again.

Next Week!

Well, we know there can’t be another Popeye web comic with a strong storyline that people might want to know about and that I could provide a brief recap for. So let’s get back on schedule with Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop in a week. Would I lie to you about that?