Comments FeedReading through my reviews of the first three Fantagraphics collections of E.C. Segar’s Popeye (my review of Volume I is here, II here, and III here), one repeated phrase jumps out at me: “largely of historical interest.” The challenge I gave the work was for it to transcend that description. It occasionally did; there were flashes of satirical and absurdist genius every now and then. “The One-Way Bank” storyline from Volume II and the finale of “The Eighth Sea” storyline from Volume III stood out, and I was especially taken with Volume II’s “The Nazilia-Tonsylania War” —its treatment of state and military folly ranks with Dr. Strangelove (almost) and Duck Soup. (No pun was intended with the name “Nazilia,” by the way.) However, Segar was generally far more enamored with farce and slapstick for their own sake than he was with satire. That greatly limits the appeal of his work, at least for this adult reader. Farce and slapstick that don’t connect with anything deeper are best in small doses; they tend to wear out their welcome fairly quickly. Unfortunately, that’s the bulk of what one finds in the first three volumes, and as readers of my original reviews can see, I got myself over my disappointment by convincing myself that the strips in the first three collections were preludes to the more celebrated material (such as “Plunder Island”) that was featured in the fourth and fifth volumes. Segar’s Popeye enjoys canonical status in the world of comics, and I wanted that reputation to be truly warranted. I didn’t want to believe that, despite occasional moments of brilliance, the strip was best considered a noteworthy pop-culture period piece.
“Plunder Island,” the Sunday-strip continuity showcased in Volume IV, is widely considered Segar’s finest work on the strip. I’ve now read it, along with the rest of the fourth collection. On its own terms, it’s an entertaining treasure-island quest story, one that Segar’s talent for farce considerably livens up. The best moments are the most incongruous ones, such as the scenes where the smooth-talking moocher Wimpy saves his own neck by romancing the story’s villains, first the Sea Hag and then her monstrous henchwoman Alice the Goon. I also got a kick out of the story’s climax, wherein Popeye realizes that he can’t just take the treasure—that would be stealing from the Sea Hag—so he decides to win it away from her by playing craps. The story is a more sophisticated version of many of the animated Popeye cartoons I saw as a kid in the 1970s—the dialogue is certainly a lot denser than what one finds in children’s animation—but I’m afraid that it’s nothing more than a strong exemplar of what it now appears Segar’s Popeye generally was. It’s not the epitome of what the strip could be at its best; storylines like “The Nazilia-Tonsylania War” were the exceptions, not the rule. On the whole, Segar’s Popeye is a moderately enjoyable slapstick-adventure farce and a likable example of Depression-era popular entertainment. The strip doesn’t offer a lot more than that, and it leaves me, as it somewhat did with Noah, wondering about the basis of its canonical status and the comics canon in general.
My own guess is that when dealing with ostensibly “classic” comics, the basic standard has been that they hold their own with the popular entertainment they appeared alongside of. Comics like Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, Eisner’s The Spirit, and the EC comic-book line look positively impoverished when considered against their contemporaries among the avant-garde of writing, art, and filmmaking, but they compare pretty well to the popular movies, radio, and fiction of their day. The same is true of Segar’s Popeye. No reasonable person would consider it on the level of Faulkner, Kandinsky, or Jean Renoir’s work, but it looks right at home when viewed alongside the efforts of Mae West, W.C. Fields, and the Marx Brothers. I have nothing against the popular-entertainment standard for determining “good” comics, by the way. If a comic entertains people, it’s doing its job. And if it’s entertaining people to the extent that it becomes a pop-culture phenomenon, which Segar’s Popeye certainly did, then it’s doing its job terrifically well.
The problem arises with the perception that it’s a canonical work. Harold Bloom provided a fairly uncontroversial definition of literature’s canon when he described it as “the choice of books in our teaching institutions.” I think that holds true when talking about any media being studied; the canon is the material used to teach students about the art. The prospect of Segar’s Popeye being used to teach students about comics just doesn’t sit well with me. The strip’s stature points to the need for a new standard of canonicity for the field. Comics needs a T.S. Eliot, André Bazin, or Clement Greenberg to up-end our understanding of the medium and our judgments of its works. I perceive Segar’s Popeye as a period piece, but I can’t summon a rigorous aesthetic basis for that view. All I can muster is my own idiosyncratic opinion. I also don’t see much of anyone else doing differently. The strip makes me feel like a pretentious comics fan rather than a critic when I write about it. The only salve to my self-esteem is that I’m not as pretentious as those who put it on its pedestal to begin with.
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Update by Noah: The whole Popeye roundtable is here.
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11 Comments
Thanks for posting this Robert. I’m somewhat on board with you in your evaluation of the strip…I wasn’t that taken with it, as you mention. But I’m not sure I agree with your points about canonicity. Because…aren’t the Marx Brothers fairly canonical in terms of film? And even in literature, Fenimore Cooper is canonical (it’s no good, but it’s canonical) and so is something like the Old Man and The Sea, which is a pompous boys’ adventure story which is much more irritating than Popeye.
I get where you’re coming from — you want a modernist masterpiece canon for comics. I’m sure Domingos would agree — but as I said in my post, I wonder whether that sort of thing is actually helpful to the form in terms of encouraging good work or thinking about comics in general….
I’d point out that there are differences between canonical “high” art and canonical “pop” art. For the latter, much of what makes it canon is simply being popular for a long enough time. Paintings can be famous of course, but they usually aren’t popular in the way that films, TV, and a few comic strips are.
Maybe…but the Marx bros and Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin are seen as legitimately great films now. Film has just been more comfortable taking old pop and turning it into canon than literature generally is. Comics has kind of followed in those footsteps…though without quite the confidence or the solid high art cred, at least as of yet….
It depends on how you define the word canon. In practice, I take it to mean what one can expect (or at least not be surprised) to see taught in a college-level survey course. I don’t take it to mean stuff that’s maintained a level of commercial appeal over time.
If you’re putting together a syllabus for such a class on American film, you’d be hard-pressed to include anything from the 1930s outside of Chaplin’s City Lights or Modern Times. (And remember, you will probably have to defend your selections to your department head or a departmental committee.) A case can be made for films like Duck Soup and a half-dozen or so others, but the Chaplins are the only unquestionable choices. (Certain Keaton films would be, too, but those are from the ’20s.)
A key reason the Marx Brothers, Fields, and other vaudeville transplants have sustained a degree of popularity to this day is that the explosion of interest in film during the late 1960s led to a vogue for Depression-era stars. They’re more the beneficiaries of a nostalgia boom than anything else. Although I hasten to add that films featuring the vaudeville stars play better today than virtually anything else Hollywood produced back then.
I wouldn’t call Cooper canonical. He’s a secondary author among the American Romantics. He certainly doesn’t enjoy the status that Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Thoreau, and Poe do. I don’t think anyone who’s read Twain’s savaging of him–as virtually every American-literature scholar has–takes him terribly seriously. He continues to stay in print because there seems to be a perennial market for boy’s-adventure fiction that’s enjoyed any substantial popular appeal. It’s the same reason Edgar Rice Burroughs’ material has stayed in print over the decades. That stuff certainly doesn’t enjoy any literary prestige.
The Old Man and the Sea is an odd case. It’s popular with middle- and high-school English teachers because it’s one of the few novels with literary pretensions that they can count on not boring their students. The American-literature professors of my acquaintance wouldn’t go near it with a pair of tongs. They invariably stick with selections from Hemingway’s short stories, and if they opt for one of his novels, it’s The Sun Also Rises (usually) or A Farewell to Arms.
I can come up with a comics canon that would feature newspaper strips. Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, Pogo, Peanuts, and Jules Feiffer’s work would certainly be included. I couldn’t include things like Popeye or <Li'l Abner with a straight face, even though I like a fair amount of it.
Yeah…I mean I don’t know how much anyone likes Cooper, but he does get taught and discussed. Same with Old Man and the Sea…. And for that matter a good bit of Mark Twain is closer to something like Popeye than to something like Ulysses. And then, as I said, there’s kind of no canon for television.
I mean, Popeye wouldn’t be in my canon either…but I would be okay if he was in someone else’s, I guess is my point. I think there’s some value to having different canons — and it isn’t like with Hemingway or Cooper where I actually despise it….
There’s a sort of parallel canon of works valued for their historic impact rather than their intrisic worth.
Thus mediocre novels such as Cooper’s ‘The Last of the Mohicans’, Stowes”Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, and Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’ may legitimately be enshrined therein.
The phrase “of historical interest” applies even moreso to Milt Gross, it seems. Especially this book. I’m not familiar with his later work, but “He Done Her Wrong” feels like the work of someone who’s imbibed each and every slapstick reel that came down his way. And not even Keaton style slapstick, but the sub-Fatty Arbuckle variety. At least Popeye does have quite a number of gags that have held up over the years. It’s the crashing moment after hearing so much praise for something that turns out not to be so hot.
Comics needs a T.S. Eliot, André Bazin, or Clement Greenberg to up-end our understanding of the medium and our judgments of its works.
I wonder how likely this would be to come about considering how impoverished comics have been for most of its history. The same goes with last week’s call for a new Henri Langlois to come about. Both statements I think are far more appropriate for manga, where the volume and quality of work published over the years greatly dwarfs what we have over here.
As far as film goes, besides the Chaplin one could also probably include films like Bride of Frankenstein, The 39 Steps and It Happened One Night. Then of course there’s a ton of not quite masterpieces like The Old Dark House, The Front Page, and You Can’t Take It With You. I would also mention a lesser known film like Green Pastures(1936), not taught as canon but it has a script so sharp that it blows away anything that comes out today.
Chaplin’s two major thirties films might be permanently in the pantheon, but they’re certainly not immune to scrutiny. There’s a number of things you could chip away at. Most obviously is Modern Times wholesale lifting of scenes from Clair’s A Nous La Liberté. And who can stand Chaplin’s sentimentality? I certainly can’t.
“A key reason the Marx Brothers, Fields, and other vaudeville transplants have sustained a degree of popularity to this day is that the explosion of interest in film during the late 1960s led to a vogue for Depression-era stars. They’re more the beneficiaries of a nostalgia boom than anything else.”
Nuts to that. Groucho was popular throughout the 50′s, on You Bet Your Life, or whatever that quiz-show was called. The Marx Brothers maintained popularity to this day by virtue of being the Marx Brothers– unlike “meaningful art”, good comedy doesn’t rely upon oligarchical canons to maintain their popularity. They may not get to be included in Harold Bloom’s lesson-plan at Yale, and taught to various members of Skull & Bones, but I’d suggest that’s perhaps to Harpo’s credit.
But they totally get taught in film school! Maybe not by Harold Bloom, but they’re pretty solidly canonized….
for what it’s worth bloom lists duck soup in his very short canon of the “american sublime”