Eye Lie Popeye #3
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeEye Lie Popeye #3 marks a pivotal structural turn for Massive Publishing's five-part licensed miniseries: it is the issue in which the mysterious bejeweled eye that drove Popeye to lose his own finally surfaces as a narrative object with a concrete function — a recording artifact — and then passes from Popeye's world directly into Olive Oyl's face after she loses an eye in combat, repositioning a long-static supporting character at the center of the mythology. The issue also delivers a first for Popeye lore across any era of the character's nearly century-long publication history: a story beat in which spinach-fueled invincibility is explicitly defeated, forcing Popeye to rely on Olive Oyl and Bluto for rescue rather than his own legendary strength. Within the broader context of the series, issue #3 sits at the midpoint of a creative project that began as a viral piece of fan art in 2023, materialized as a Free Comic Book Day preview in May 2024, and then arrived as a monthly direct-market miniseries — representing one of the rare cases where grassroots online enthusiasm for a golden-age public-domain-adjacent character translated, step by step, into a formal licensed comic book run.
In "Eye Lie Popeye: Book Three," Popeye, Olive, and Bluto join forces against General Stalwart, with Popeye landing the final blow—no spinach needed. When the Dyad Twins prove too powerful, the Sea Hag whiskes them away to her hidden lair, where Eugene the Jeep and the Sea Hag unveil startling truths about the legendary "Eye of Haggery." Written and illustrated by Marcus Williams, with inks and colors by Williams and Rodney Velchez, this bold chapter blends surreal adventure with a mystery deepening in the shadows. The cover by Marcus Williams captures the moment’s eerie grandeur.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The creative seed for Eye Lie Popeye was a 2023 digital illustration by Marcus Williams depicting Popeye and Goku training together in a hypothetical Dragon Ball crossover universe; the image spread widely online and caught the attention of Alex Garcia, Director of Direct-to-Consumer Comics at King Features Syndicate, the longtime rights holder of Popeye. King Features and Massive Publishing — a company founded in 2022 by Michael Calero, Trevor Richardson, and Kevin Roditeli — partnered to develop the concept into a formal miniseries, with Williams writing and drawing the book and Rodney Velchez handling interior art from issue #2 onward. A 24-page preview debuted as a Free Comic Book Day offering on May 4, 2024 — coinciding with Popeye's 95th anniversary — before the full series launched in direct market shops beginning August 28, 2024; issue #3 shipped November 27, 2024.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Writer and cover artist: Marcus Williams (credits include Marvel's Captain America, DC's Nubia & the Amazons, and Young Justice); interior pencils and inks shared with artist Rodney Velchez beginning with issue #2, carrying through #3.
- Publisher: Massive Publishing, in a licensed partnership with King Features Syndicate, owner of the Popeye intellectual property.
- Released November 27, 2024, as the third chapter of a five-issue limited series (issues #1–#5, spanning August 2024 through July 2025).
- Issue #3 plot pivotal: Popeye is defeated by a magically powered antagonist immune to spinach — described by official solicitation copy as the first time he requires rescue — with Olive Oyl and Bluto stepping in to save him.
- The series-long MacGuffin — the bejeweled eye Popeye was meant to use but dismissed as a prank gift — is finally revealed in this issue; because it was never activated by Popeye, it is worthless to the Sea Hag as a data-recording device, and Olive Oyl (having lost her own eye in battle) takes it for herself.
- The overarching series premise offers the first sustained, in-continuity explanation of how Popeye lost his eye in nearly a century of published stories; the character's 1931 newspaper strip origin (Popeye's Life Story by E.C. Segar) had previously addressed the subject, but Eye Lie Popeye constructs an entirely new mythology around it.
- The series originated as a webcomic preview posted episodically in late 2022 before being reformatted into a FCBD preview (May 2024) and then a monthly print run — and has since been further adapted into Comics Kingdom's first-ever vertically formatted 'toon-style' webtoon, debuting May 2025.
- Variant cover for issue #3 Cover B was supplied by Francesco Tomaselli; the Cover A is by series creator Marcus Williams. A trade paperback collection (Eye Lie Popeye Vol. 1) has been solicited, with ISBN 9781961012370.
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