DVD Review: Popeye The Sailor Volume 1: 1933-1938

Okay, Popeye the Sailor Man is no spring chicken - he's 78 years old now. He's still strong to the finish because he eats his spinach, but admittedly, his days as a major cultural creative power are gone. He's a cartoon icon like Mickey Mouse – famous, but you're darned if you can remember what for exactly.

Well, all you need to do to learn what made Popeye world famous is pick up the absolutely amazing new DVD set Popeye The Sailor Vol. 1: 1933-1938. Over four jam-packed discs, you'll find a platoon of the still-dazzling cartoons that drew in huge crowds nearly 70 years ago. These were some of the most popular cartoons ever made, spun out of the "Thimble Theatre" newspaper comic by E.C. Segar. Segar created Popeye as a throwaway character in 1929, but the rough-and-ready, hard-fighting, loyal and stubborn sailor man soon took over the whole strip. Segar's spunky 'toons have their own kind of populist genius, but it was the screen cartoons by the Fleischer brothers Max and Dave that made Popeye a global sensation. (Heck, a poll of theater owners back in the 1930s showed the sailor was even more popular than his big cartoon rival, Mickey Mouse.)

Fleischer Studios' cartoons were some of the earliest animation creations, and their work still looks great today. The animators experimented with the possibilities of cartoons, packing every frame with gags, surreal action, and slapstick. The new DVD set collects the first 60 cartoons by the Fleischers, all cleaned up and restored, but even more important, there's a wealth of special features here.

This set has been called "the best animation package ever put out on DVD" by comics writer Mark Evanier. It's a cornucopia of material not just on the sailor man, but on the early days of animation in general, and it offers weeks of viewing. Many of the shorts feature commentary by animation experts and even a few surviving artists who worked on the films. There are two major documentaries, one a look at the creation and history of Popeye on film, one on the roots of animation from 1900 to 1920. You've even got mini-documentaries on everything from the use of music in the shorts to Olive Oyl's femininity (in a short marvelously titled, "Me Fickle Goyl, Olive Oyl: The World's Least Likely Sex Symbol"). As if all that wasn't enough, several dozen primitive pre-Popeye animated shorts dating back to 1915 are included as bonuses — raw cartoons more interesting as time capsules now, true, but still a fascinating look at where the medium began, and how far it came in just 15 years or so.

Article Author: Nik Dirga

An American journalist who now lives in New Zealand, Nik Dirga writes whenever the mood strikes him about books, music, movies, pop culture and more.

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