ED BLACK'S CARTOON FLASHBACK
BEYOND SEGAR
After Segar's death at 43 in 1938 other cartoonists took over the highly popular strip. Doc Winner, Joe Musial and Bela (Bill) Zaboly kept the characters as close to Segar's style as possible, but when Bud Sagendorf, Segar's one-time assistant took over in 1958 he altered Popeye's design a bit.
Bill (Bela) Zaboly, of the NEA Service, Inc., Syndicate in Cleveland, Ohio, took over the Popeye strip in 1939. He kept the characters true to Segar's design, but he took Swee'pea out of his sleepers, aged him a bit to about eight years old and put him in pants. No longer did Swee'pea have to crawl and saw goo-goo, ga-ga. This is part of a daily strip of Decenber 8, 1957.
© KFS
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© KFS |
Bud Sagendorf spent his adult life with Popeye. He met Elzie Segar by happenstance as a teenger in Santa Monica, California, and became Segar's assistant in 1931. Passed over to continue the strip after Segar's death in 1938 because of his youth, Sagendorf was hired by King Features as a staffer in its bullpen, and later did the Popeye comic books. He was assigned the strip in 1958, then the Sunday only page in 1986. He also designed Popeye games and whote an autobiography in 1979. Sagendorf died in 1994.
After Elzie Segar died in 1938, successive cartoonists drew the characters similar to Segar's designs, but in later years cartoonists used their own styles, as in this daily strip from 1992, featuring Castor Oyl and Popeye. Former "underground" cartoonist Bobby London brought his own style to the strip to make it more contemporary. Sagendorf continued to draw the Sunday pages until his death in 1994.
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"Popeye" is a Sunday page now drawn since 1994 by Hy Eisman who, since 1984, has drawn the "Katzenjammer Kids" page, both for King Features. Eisman also pencilled the "Kerry Drake" daily and Sunday strip from 1957 to 1960 and pencilled the "Bringing Up Father" dailies from 1960 to 1964. He also drew the Little Iodine" Sunday page ritten by the late Bob Dunn from 1967 to 1984. Eisman had extensive experience in the comic book field drawing "The Munsters," "Felix the cat," "Tom and Jerry," and "Nancy" among others. The NCS awarded him the divisional award for comic books in 1975 and 1984. He claims to have drawn 1,635 love story pages for Charlton Publications.
A Popeye Sunday page by current artist Hy Eisman. Popeye is wearing the same outfit he wore in 1929 and also in the Fleischer animated cartoons.
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