Let's dispense with the unabashed fannish gushing right away: the first volume of Fantagraphics' new Elzie Crisler Segar Popeye reprint — "I Yam What I Yam!" — is one of the coolest book repackagings ever. A tabloid-sized hardback printing six daily strips to a page, a thick die-cut cardboard cover featuring a magnified panel of the squinty ol' gob slugging a burly sparring partner and himself on the jaw: it's friggin' magnificent.  It’s difficult to imagine a better showcase for the comic strip adventures of this larger-than-life American creation.

Printing the first two years of Popeye's newspaper adventures, I Yam takes its sweet time (a good 19 weeks of storytelling) before the sailorman makes his first appearance in "Thimble Theater," the strip he called his home. Segar's "Theater" had been running over a decade before the scene-stealin' sailorman showed up on panel - and, from all appearances, it was a pretty sprightly strip beforehand.

Centered on the adventures of the Oyl family — brother Castor and sister Olive, most notably (along with Olive's sappy then-boyfriend, Ham Gravy) — the strip was a rambling series of fantastic comic adventures, typified by the tale that first brings Popeye into the fray. In it, small-fry hero Castor comes into possession of an African whiffle hen - an amazing creature that is impossible to cage but who provides good luck to its owner. A number of slouchy sinister types are after the hen, of course, and before Castor even meets Popeye, he's kidnapped, tossed off a cliff, and buried alive.

Heading for the docks in search of a rough type to be his bodyguard, Castor happens upon Popeye, and the resultant initial exchange is comic strip history:

"Hey there," Castor asks. "Are you a sailor?"
"'Ja think I'm a cowboy?" Popeye shoots back.

From that point on, "Thimble Theater" was forever changed. Ham Gravy was unceremoniously shuffled off-stage in a couple of Sunday strips, Olive quickly warmed up to the idea that this mug with a face like a mule was her new beau, and Castor spent his time alternately and ineffectively trying to boss Popeye around and breaking off their partnership. Castor still remained an important part of the cast — would-be brains to Popeye's brawn — though in time he too would get shunted off to the Irrelevant Characters Home.

In Volume One, however, the "Theater" is still half Castor's. It's he who gets the plots rolling, usually with a moneymaking scheme (taking the whiffle hen to the aptly named Dice Island, promoting Popeye as a prize fighter, and opening a detective agency to investigate "myskeries"), though it's safe to say that Popeye provides most of the action. If big-headed Castor continued to treat our hero like he was a supporting character throughout the two years repped here, it's a different story for the reader. As soon as Segar gave the malaprop-spouting roughneck more than two panels to speak, he grabbed hold of our attention.