Tag: wimpy

# 236 (VOL. 2 #8): WIMPY REDEEMED

Next to Popeye himself, J. Wellington Wimpy is the greatest character that cartoonist E. C. Segar created for his Thimble Theatre comic strip. That may surprise those of you who know Popeye and Wimpy basically from animated cartoons. But Wimpy is a character who expresses himself not through action like Popeye–indeed, Wimpy usually remains still and seemingly expressionless–but through dialogue. Aficionados of the Max Fleischer Popeye cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s love the comments that Jack Mercer, the voice of Popeye, seemingly ad libbed in recording the dialogue. (By the way, 2010 is the centennial of Mercer’s birth.) Nevertheless, dialogue is not a strong point of Fleischer cartoons, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they reduced the very verbal Wimpy to a mere moocher of hamburgers. But to read Segar’s comic strips about the character is to continually discover new and surprising layers to Wimpy’s personality.

A few weeks ago I began critiquing the Sunday strips featuring Wimpy in Fantagraphics Books’ Popeye Vol. 3, which reprints Segar’s Thimble Theatre from the 1930s. One of Wimpy’s catchphrases in the strip is inviting someone to a duck dinner, adding “You bring the ducks.” In the January 15, 1933 strip Popeye is again amused when Wimpy pulls this on Rough-House for the umpteenth time. Enraged, Rough-House challenges Wimpy to a fight. “It’s men like you who start wars and cause the downfall of nations,” replies Wimpy. That seems a rather grandiose claim, but this strip first ran in the 1930s, when World War I was a recent memory and Europe was moving towards World War II, and wimpy may have a point. Befitting his name, Rough-House does want to settle disputes with violence, and he has difficulty controlling his intense rages. Wimpy, in contrast, not only usually avoids violence, although, as we shall soon see, Segar will experiment with Wimpy as a fighter, but will even treat his adversaries as friends: when Rough-House ends up in the hospital in later strips, Wimpy brings him flowers.

Popeye suggests that Wimpy and Rough-House settle their dispute through a prize fight for charity; presumably Popeye thinks that this will set rules for the fight, and do some good as well.

Trying to train for the fight, Wimpy proves unable to lift a barbell. Popeye persuades Rough-House to give Wimpy some hamburgers and spinach to eat. “Ya wouldn’t fight a man which is weak from hunger,” says Popeye, providing another indication of the real suffering at the basis of Wimpy’s comedy.

I keep reading that Segar rarely mentioned spinach as the source of Popeye’s strength in the comic strip. Certainly spinach turns up less frequently than in the animated cartoons, in which part of the formula is having Popeye boost his strength at a crucial point by eating spinach. But I see spinach being mentioned repeatedly in Popeye Vol. 3: even the profits from the Wimpy-Rough-House prize fight are to “go for buyin’ spinach for poor kids.”

Upon eating the burgers and spinach, Wimpy becomes superhumanly strong, and bounces the barbell off his bicep: tonnage is nothing to me now.” Does spinach make even Wimpy strong like Popeye? (If it works like that on everyone in Popeye’s world, why don’t his enemies eat any?) Or is Segar suggesting that hamburgers are to Wimpy what spinach is to Popeye? Whatever the case, Segar obviously decided this was a mistake and immediately dropped the notion of a super-strong Wimpy.

So when the prize fight begins in the November 2, 1934 Sunday strip, Wimpy relies not on super-strength but on iron concealed in his boxing gloves. Rough-House has iron in his gloves, too: “You’re just as crooked as I am,” Wimpy observes. Popeye gets rid of their iron, but then Wimpy punches Rough-House from behind. It’s certainly in character for Wimpy to cheat, but it seems odd to see Wimpy acting so violently. Perhaps Segar had once again gone down the wrong road.

So in the following Sunday strip, January 29, 1933, as the prize fight continues, Wimpy instead leans against a post, faking being hurt. This seems more true to Wimpy’s generally peaceful personality. In fact, by the end of this Sunday strip, we learn that Wimpy has even bet on Rough-House to win the fight.

Exasperated, Popeye demands that Wimpy fight, and points out that the fight is being broadcast on radio, and that Wimpy’s mother might be listening: “What’ll she think of her boy?” Perhaps unexpectedly, Wimpy begins weeping: again, Segar is showing the pain beneath Wimpy’s clownish facade. “Popeye, I am broken-hearted! I have disgraced the name of Wimpy–do you really think Mother is listening in?” Certainly we have seen that Wimpy is fully capable of lying, but this seems sincere. This Wimpy is not a violent person at all, but “for mother’s sake” he takes a swing at Rough-House, and, to his surprise, knocks him out.

After the fight, in the February 5, 1933 strip, Wimpy is back at Rough-House’s cafe and, ever persistent, pulls his usual trick of inviting him to a duck dinner, “you bring the ducks.” Furious, Rough-House punches Wimpy, and Popeye, who comments later in the strip that Wimpy is “a frien’ of mine,” retaliates by hitting Rough-House hard. “The trouble with you is yer too blasted sensitiff,” says Popeye. That suggests that Rough-House’s hot temper is due to being overly sensitive, having too little control of his emotions, and that the usually deadpan Wimpy and Popeye are rather stoical in comparison. While Wimpy may not be a violent person himself, he’s something of a voyeur of violence. When Rough-House’s friends object to Popeye hitting him, Wimpy comments, “Let’s you and them fight,” and so they do, as Wimpy settles in for a big burger dinner, served by a woozy Rough-House.

In that strip Popeye declared that “Rough-House can’t hit Wimpy. . .cause he’s a frien’ of mine.” But by the following Sunday, Feb. 12, 1933, Segar seems to have changed his mind about Popeye’s attitude towards Wimpy. Now Popeye decides, “I guess Rough-House was right.” Popeye criticizes Wimpy to his face for having “no blasted self-respeck.” He continues, “Ever’ man on Eart’ is susposed to do sumpin’ important” but “Yer a hooman flop–ya ain’t got absolukely no egocism. How kin ya have self-respeck without ya got some egocism,” by which, I expect, Popeye means that Wimpy has no ambitions: “Ya wants to be jus’ mediocum,” which means “mediocre” in Popeye-speak. “I ain’t got no sympathy for a loafer–yer lower’n a worm, tha’s what,” Popeye concludes.

Wimpy characteristically seems immune to insults, whether he consciously ignores them or is oblivious to them. In later strips, no matter how much his nemesis George W. Geezil thunders insults and threats at him, Wimpy remains unmoved. But Geezil deals in empty bluster; Popeye is giving Wimpy a piercing critique of his personality. As a result, Wimpy again begins to weep: “You hurt my feelings,” he says simply. Popeye immediately feels guilty and sorry: “Yer okay. Why, yer a swell guy.” Then Popeye returns to his original attitude to Wimpy at the start of this series of Sunday strips: “When they ride ya, jus’ say “I yam what I yam an’ that’s all I yam.” Of course, that is Popeye’s catchphrase about himself. Not only is Popeye accepting Wimpy, faults and all, but he even seems to be suggesting that Wimpy is like himself, that they are each true to their nature. Popeye and Wimpy end up at Rough-House’s cafe, where Popeye apparently buys him a big dinner, complete with spinach. Wimpy lavishes “my friend” Popeye with praise, inviting him to a duck dinner. “You bring the ducks, Popeye,” Rough-House comments cynically. And yes, Wimpy has once again succeeded in getting someone–Popeye–to feed him. But does that mean that Wimpy was faking when he broke down in tears? He could have been, but I suspect that Wimpy really does regard Popeye as his friend, and was genuinely hurt by his criticism. Remember, Wimpy claims to have no other friends, and, as we saw in the prize fight, Wimpy does seem to have a sense of guilt over being such a passive failure in life.

In the following Sundays Segar demonstrates that this second interpretation is correct. At the start of the February 19, 1933 strip, Popeye is again sharply criticizing Wimpy, but this time not out of disgust but a kind of tough love: “I ain’t tryin’ to hurt your feelin’s–I’m bawlin’ ya out on account of I wants ya to change yer ways an’ be a man.” Wimpy replies, “But you say such awful things about me.” When Wimpy is conning someone, he uses grandiose, flowery language. The fact that his reply to Popeye is so simply phrased indicates that Wimpy is not pretending here: he really is hurt, and perhaps realizes what Popeye is telling him is largely true.

Then, surprisingly, Wimpy’s mother, whom he hasn’t seen in fifteen years, arrives. Segar could have drawn her as a caricature, looking like Wimpy in drag, but no, he draws her as realistically as he can, and treats her seriously. She has recently lost the cottage where they lived; this may be an allusion to the Great Depression. Wimpy embraces his mother, and they clearly love each other. To his credit, Popeye will not let Wimpy’s mother know what a failure her son is. “He’s the finest man I knows!” Popeye declares, saying, rather over the top, “He should been a presidink like Georgia Washenting.” But in between those statements Popeye adds what he may truly believe: “I knows they’s good stuff in him.”

But maybe Popeye doesn’t fully realize how true that is. In the February 26, 1933 a narrator in a caption, presumably voicing Segar’s own beliefs, calls Wimpy “the most complete loafer who ever lived.” But now Wimpy confronts his own guilty conscience over his life: “What will poor Mother think when she learns I’ve amounted to nothing?” Still covering for him, Popeye tells Mrs. Wimpy that he would “trust Wimpy with anything I got,” whereupon Wimpy seizes the opportunity to borrow five dollars from him. Out of Mrs. Wimpy’s presence, Popeye, enraged at Wimpy’s mooching (“I’ll make a man out of him for his mother’s sake or bust his blasted head.”) hits him. But then Rough-House reveals that Wimpy spent only ten cents on a burger and spent the other $4.90 on flowers for his mother. This surprises Popeye, and probably surprises the readers as well.

It is unusual for Wimpy to give gifts. In the February 12, 1933 strip Popeye had complained to Wimpy that “Yer jus’ like a octopipuss–ya takes what ya kin reach but ya don’t never give nothin’.” Despite his violence, Popeye is the opposite: a highly generous man. In the March 5, 1933 strip Popeye buys a hamburger stand for Wimpy as a means to make enough money to support his impoverished mother. “I don’t do good deeds to get credick,” Popeye explains, “I does “˜em on account of they oughter get done.” Perhaps surprisingly, Popeye then reveals that he is religious, but that’s not his motive for charity. “An’ if ya does good deeds jus’ to get yerself a swell seat in heaven, yer selfish. The only reward ya should expeck for doin’ right is the sort of cumfertable feelin’ which ya gets from doin’ it.”

Running a hamburger stand, though, is the wrong job for a comedy glutton like Wimpy, because he can’t stop himself from devouring all the burgers. Although Wimpy usually has a placid, gentlemanly, even erudite manner, when his hunger overpowers him, he starts acting like an animal. He explains to Popeye that a customer ordered a burger, “but when I tried to hand it to the customer, my teeth would snap at it–snap at it, sir, like a dog.” Segar is thus comically exposing the animal passions that may lie beneath a person’s civilized surface. I wonder if he may also be satirizing addiction in Wimpy’s uncontrollable lust for burgers.

Popeye, the embodiment of selfless charity, gives Wimpy nearly all the money he has, five thousand dollars, so she can buy back her house. Popeye is not simply helping out Mrs. Wimpy but Wimpy as well: “If she stays here she’ll find out what a arful thing ya are.” Typically, Wimpy reacts by pretending he doesn’t need charity: “I’ll not accept it as a gift–I’ll pay you back Tuesday.”

But hasn’t Popeye made a colossal mistake by giving Wimpy the parasite five thousand dollars? Actually, no: Popeye may think that Wimpy is an “arful thing,” but Wimpy does indeed give his mother the full five thousand dollars, enough for her to buy back her home “and have plenty to live on.” (Five thousand dollars was worth far more in 1933 than it is today.) Typically, Wimpy does borrow two nickels from her “for telephoning purposes” and then uses it instead to buy a burger. But mooching ten cents out of five thousand dollars is easily excusable.

Perhaps Wimpy, who lacks “egocism,” simply has no desire to be rich, and is content just surviving from burger to burger. Similarly, though Popeye repeatedly earns or finds fortunes in Segar’s strips, he typically gives the money away as charity. Again, I remind myself that these strips first appeared in the depths of the Great Depression. By not caring about money, Popeye and Wimpy, each in his own way, triumph over the Depression. They not only survive in this time of hardship, but they do not fall victim to depression in the Depression. Part of Popeye’s heroism lies in his willingness to give away large sums of money to help the less fortunate. Popeye’s own “egocism” does not involve becoming wealthy. And Wimpy, in selflessly turning all that money over to his mother, proves surprisingly heroic as well. However much Popeye feels “disgusk” at Wimpy, one can see why Popeye nonetheless regards Wimpy as his friend.

But friendship, oddly, does not stop Wimpy from becoming Popeye’s rival in love, surprising as that may seem. In the Sunday, March 13, 1933 strip, Wimpy declares to Olive Oyl that he has fallen in love with her. Reading her personality correctly, Wimpy tells her that he has a million dollars worth of gold, something that indeed interests her. But as Wimpy embroiders his story of how he lost the million in gold in the Arctic snows, Olive refuses to believe it, and turns to Popeye when he arrives. But then out walks Wimpy, telling Olive, “I thank you for a pleasant evening,” as Popeye reacts in shock, reading who knows how much into Wimpy’s simple statement. But this is only the beginning of Popeye and Wimpy’s competition in romance, as we shall see when I return to this Wimpython in coming weeks.

–Copyright 2010 Peter Sanderson

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#234 (VOL. 2 #6): DIARY OF A WIMPY CON MAN

Most of us probably first saw Popeye in one of his hundreds of animated cartoons., but he originated in Elzie (E. C.) Segar’s newspaper comic strip Thimble Theatre in 1928. Although Thimble Theatre had been running for ten years when he made his debut, seemingly as a minor player for a single story arc, Popeye quickly became the lead in Segar’s large and colorful cast of characters. But only a handful of those characters made it to the screen in the animated cartoons produced by the Max Fleischer Studio in the 1930s and early 1940s, and by Paramount’s Famous Studios (the Fleischer Studio minus the Fleischers) in the 1940s and 1950s. Most of these cartoons followed a formula in which Popeye competed for Thimble Theatre leading lady Olive Oyl against his rival Bluto, who appeared relatively briefly in only a single storyline during Segar’s run on the strip. Popeye’s adopted baby Swee’pea, Poopdeck Pappy, Eugene the Jeep, and even, in one cartoon, the monstrous Goons also made it into some of the Fleischer cartoons.

But apart from the central Popeye-Olive-Bluto triangle, the Segar character who appeared most frequently onscreen was hamburger aficionado J. Wellington Wimpy. He even plays prominent roles in two of the Fleischers’ animated Popeye featurettes, Popeye Meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936) and Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves (1937). This surely testifies to Wimpy’s popularity in the Popeye newspaper strip.

But Wimpy in the animated cartoons is only a superficial shadow of Segar’s great creation in the comic strip. Wimpy certainly acts in character in the Fleischer cartoons: he devours hamburgers when he has them, tries to mooch them when he doesn’t, using his trademark line “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today,” and will even trail after a small bird in the hope of turning it into a meal. Basically the cartoons reduce Wimpy to the familiar stock comedy character of the glutton.

Recently Fantagraphics Books has been reprinting Segar’s Thimble Theatre from the storyline introducing Popeye in a handsome series of hardcover books, at the rate of one volume per year: they are now up to Volume Four. The cover of Volume Three features Wimpy himself, and I was surprised to discover that Wimpy dominates virtually all the Sunday strips included in this volume. Although Popeye is the lead character in the daily strips in this volume, he is more often than not Wimpy’s straight man in the Sunday strips in this collection. Indeed, it is clear that while Wimpy may be a minor supporting character in the animated cartoons. he is the second most important character in the Thimble Theatre newspaper strip, playing far more of a role than even Olive Oyl.

Wimpy is a variation on a character archetype that goes back to the ancient Roman comedies of Plautus and Terence: the parasite. This character type can be fixated on food and on trying to get food. But he does not turn to work to get his meal; rather, he lives off the charity of others, often deluging them with empty flattery to get what he wants.

One can see this aspect of Wimpy in the first Sunday in Fantagraphics’ Popeye Volume 3, from October 9, 1932. (As usual in these analytical essays, I issue a spoiler alert.) Popeye has been invited to Olive’s party, but realizes that he carries the odor from all the onions he has been eating. So Popeye sprays himself with perfume to compensate, but goes too far. At the party Olive and the guests are repelled by the overdose of perfume. Popeye leaves the party and retreats to his hangout, Rough-House’s restaurant, afflicted by melancholy: “I yam a misfit. I tries to do the right thing, but I yam always wrong.” This is an important part of Popeye’s appeal as a character. He may be the super-strong hero of the strip, but he is an outsider in society, ugly, uneducated, and maladroit at various social proprieties, with whom we can empathize. As a combination of proto-superhero and social misfit, Segar’s Popeye foreshadows the later Marvel superheroes.

In this moment of Popeye’s vulnerability, Wimpy showers him with praise. “My friend, you are heavenly,” Wimpy tells him, loudly sniffing his scent. “Your fragrance takes me back to childhood when I lay among the geraniums in my mother’s garden.” As Wimpy pours on the flowery flattery, he seemingly cannot help but reveal what is really on his mind, and what his true icon of beauty is: “Your most delightful perfume reminds me of blooming pastures wherein dwell cows, of which are made ground beef sandwiches.” And then Wimpy makes his pitch: “My friend, will you buy for me a hamburger?”

Popeye doesn’t fall for it: “No!” So Wimpy moves away from Popeye, takes a clothespin, affixes it on his nose to block the smell of Popeye’s perfume, and then looks over at Popeye with a deadpan expression on his face. Since Wimpy’s strategy didn’t work, he drops the flatterer’s mask. Popeye reacts in shock while Wimpy remains cool and quiet: if he can’t get a free hamburger out of Popeye he will take his revenge by letting Popeye know what he really thinks of his “heavenly” fragrance. And thus we see that Wimpy is no ordinary version of the comedy parasite.

Wimpy is also a variation on another comedy archetype that often turns up here in “Comics in Context,” and in the August 27, 1933 Sunday strip in this collection, he seems well aware of it. The strip opens with Popeye and Rough-House discussing how they are both fed up with Wimpy’s continual mooching. But soon they are instead puzzled as to why Wimpy hasn’t tried to mooch any burgers today. Wimpy explains that he injured his jaw and therefore can’t open his mouth wide enough to eat. Rather than feel sorry for him, Rough-House decides to take this opportunity to play “a mean trick” on Wimpy, and Popeye, Wimpy’s nemesis George W. Geezil (more about him later), and other patrons of Rough-House’s establishment gather to watch. Rough-House then presents Wimpy with “the finest hamburger I ever made,” a large burger indeed, for free. The other customers look on in amusement at the idea that Wimpy can see this burger but can’t eat it. With his usual deadpan expression, seemingly unwounded by this “mean trick,” Wimpy says he expected this from “my tricky friend.” Then he adds, “But as you can see, I too am quite tricky,” and he opens his mouth enormously wide, as if in a great, triumphant grin, and shoves the giant hamburger right in. J. Wellington Wimpy is, after all, one of the greatest trickster figures in comic and cartoon art.

In these early Sunday strips from 1932 and 1933 we can see Segar experimenting with Wimpy, developing the character, sometimes changing his mind about him, and experimenting with Popeye as well. Popeye has an ambivalent attitude towards Wimpy in these early strips, shifting back and forth, perhaps reflecting an ambivalence in Segar’s own attitude towards Wimpy.

In the October 20, 1932 strip Rough-House has grown so infuriated with Wimpy’s mooching that he pulls out a gun. But Popeye stops him, saying, “I sez ya ain’t gon’er shoot “˜im! He’s okay–it takes all kinds of people to make a world.” Nevertheless, there are already limits to Popeye’s tolerance. Rough-House’s restaurant is infested with flies as well as Wimpy (another kind of pest?). Popeye sprays Wimpy with sugar syrup, so the flies will swarm around him, lures Wimpy outside with a hamburger, but then puts the burger on the branch of a tree, out of Wimpy’s grasp. Back at Rough-House’s Popeye laughs at having rid Rough-House of both his problems.

But in the following Sunday, Nov. 6, 1932, Wimpy returns, with the flies still following him. One of Wimpy’s admirable qualities is his persistence; like Popeye, he (usually) doesn’t give up. Rough-House puts a hamburger in a basket attached to a dog, which then runs out of the restaurant, with Wimpy in pursuit. Popeye is displeased, apparently feeling that Rough-House has gone too far. But Popeye is amused when Wimpy returns with both the dog and the burger. “As a rule, gentlemen,” Wimpy declares, “I am an inactive man, but when there’s a sandwich at stake, I am both limber of leg and fleet of foot.”

Popeye seems to admire Wimpy’s triumph here. For one thing, Popeye tends to sympathize with underdogs, and for another, Popeye has much more of a sense of humor than Wimpy’s adversaries Rough-House and Geezil. Moreover, Wimpy has pulled off a feat of sorts here by catching up with the dog. In these strips Wimpy is repeatedly called a “loafer,” but as he himself observes, he is very willing to exert himself in pursuit of his goal, the hamburger. Wimpy has no regular job, but perhaps his true vocation is trickery: he certainly works to persuade people to feed him.

Something else notable about Wimpy is his sense of dignity. Notice his elegant use of language in that previous quotation. He is an unemployed man who is continually, in effect, begging for food. But there does not come off as an aggressive beggar who might repel the readers, nor does he seem pathetic. Even as he does undignified things he has a certain dignity in his manner and his speech, as if what he is doing is utterly respectable, as if his attempts to con people out of hamburgers is a job like any other. There are exceptions, as we shall see, when his hunger gets the better of him.

Significantly, in the January 15, 1933 strip, when, urged by Popeye, Rough-House offers Wimpy hamburgers and spinach for free, Wimpy protests, “I cannot accept charity, my friend. Charge this to my account.” Rough-House points out, “You ain’t got no account.” Wimpy proudly replies, “Then take it away,” before his hunger gets the better of him, and he ads, “Leave it here.” This suggests that Wimpy’s sense of dignity prevents him from admitting to being a beggar or a charity case. Hence, when Wimpy promises to pay somebody Tuesday for a hamburger today, he isn’t just conning someone: Wimpy is trying to maintain the fiction that he is not the desperately impoverished man he actually is. (As Rough-House notes at one point, Wimpy never shows up on Tuesdays.)

Though Wimpy does not actively seek out work, he is not opposed to employment. He regularly serves as the referee in Popeye’s boxing matches, and in these strips when someone offers Wimpy a job, he accepts. For example, in the Nov 27, 1932 strip Popeye suggests that Rough-House give Wimpy a job shooting the mice infesting the restaurant. (Rough-House’s diner is clearly not of the highest caliber.) Wimpy accepts but then keeps missing the mice when he shoots and fears he will never succeed. But then Wimpy finds a mouse caught in a mousetrap, shoots it, and turns it in to Rough-House in exchange for a hamburger. Wimpy continues to show Rough-House the sane mouse over and over, pretending it is a different one each time, and getting a burger each time. Popeye is about to tell Rough-House that Wimpy is cheating when Wimpy looks fixedly at Popeye and says emphatically, “My good friend–I am hungry–very hungry.” Popeye shuts up.

Reading this strip, I felt as if the comedian, Wimpy, had suddenly revealed the pain behind his comedy. Segar created Wimpy during the Great Depression; these strips were published in the early 1930s, when many people were indeed jobless and going hungry. Maybe this fact helps explain Wimpy’s popularity with newspaper strip readers of the 1930s: here is a penniless man who is a survivor, who lives by his wits, persists and retains his dignity, even though he is reduced to living on the charity of others. Wimpy’s mooching may make us smile, but it is something he must do to survive.

So in the next Sunday strip, December 4, 1932, when Rough-House complains that Wimpy is just a “loafer,” Popeye retorts, “Rough-House, ya got to take people for what they are–Wimpy is what he is–the same as I yam what I yam.” Wimpy may not pursue getting work, but Popeye, at this point, is not about to penalize Wimpy for that. Popeye recognizes that Wimpy is simply behaving according to his essential character, and wants Rough-House to be more tolerant of that, perhaps implying that Rough-House should indeed help feed him.

This strip too raises the curtain on the sadder aspect of Wimpy’s existence. Wimpy notes that he has “no friends, no pals.” Perhaps, then, when he elsewhere calls Popeye “my friend,” Wimpy isn’t just flattering him: he seems to long for friends to help him, indeed, for companionship. In this Sunday strip Wimpy even declares, perhaps alluding to the Depression, “It’s a cruel world. Better I should be dead–no longer can I stand my hunger.” Seeing Wimpy head for a pier, Popeye even fears that Wimpy will commit suicide. But instead he finds Wimpy simply fishing for food. Once again, this is a a source of Wimpy’s appeal: he doesn’t let this “cruel world” destroy him but keeps trying to survive in it, hoping for the best. Maybe he will catch a fish.

In the January 1, 1933 Sunday strip Rough-House complains that if he shoots Wimpy, he’ll be hanged. Again Popeye counsels tolerance, and perhaps having a sense of humor, telling Rough-House that he “takes life too serious.”

In this Sunday installment Wimpy discovers he has just inherited $25 from an uncle, a tiny sum that nonetheless seems huge in the context of this strip. Nos that Wimpy can actually afford to pay him, Rough-House plies him with food. But while Wimpy is eating, he is besieged by bill collectors, who claim all of his inheritance. And so when it comes time to pay for his dinner, Wimpy once again resorts to his trademark pledge of paying you next Tuesday. Rough-House seethes with angry frustration but Popeye is amused by the absurdity of it all. Wimpy, seemingly sincere, tries to comfort Rough-House by saying, “Cheer up, my friend–I have another uncle.” Again, Wimpy is characteristically optimistic: maybe someday he will get another inheritance.

In the October 30, 1932 strip, not only was Wimpy not bothered by the flies in Rough-House’s cafe, but he said that flies liked him: “That’s because I’m sympathetic to all dumb animals.” At the start of the January 8, 1933 Sunday strip, Popeye too feels sympathy for an animal when he sees a man kick a dog. “Poor little swab,” Popeye says, comforting the dog; then, outraged, he calls to the dog’s tormentor, addressing him as if he were the real animal–“Ahoy, ya beask!”–and then beating him up. Popeye then takes the dog to Rough-House’s to feed him hamburgers. Wimpy begins barking at the dog, who then brings the burgers to Wimpy. “Lissen, Wimpy, the first time was funny,” says Popeye in annoyance, “but now yer tryin’ to take advantage of a dumb animal.” Popeye has sympathy towards “dumb animals,” but it appears that Wimpy actually speaks the dog’s language. That implies that Wimpy is somehow closer to the world of nature than even Popeye is, though each is an outsider in his own way in the world of human society.

So there is a lot more to Wimpy’s character than first meets the eye, and we shall see still more in weeks to come.

–Copyright 2010 Peter Sanderson

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