Feature Book #14
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFeature Book #14 belongs to David McKay's pioneering series — the first American comic book format dedicated entirely to a single character — and its Popeye installments are among the most narratively rich of the lot, reprinting E. C. Segar strips that centered on Poopdeck Pappy, one of the last major characters Segar would introduce before his death in 1938. The issue packages strips that showcase Eugene the Jeep, the supernatural fourth-dimensional animal whose pop-cultural afterlife would extend far beyond the funny pages, including a widely credited role in inspiring the nickname of the U.S. military's go-anywhere vehicle. Collecting Segar's late-period work at or near its creative peak, it preserves a chapter of Thimble Theatre that demonstrated how a newspaper comic strip could sustain novelistic character arcs across months of daily installments — a benchmark for long-form storytelling in the medium.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
David McKay Publications began packaging King Features newspaper strip reprints into single-character comic books by the mid-1930s, and the Popeye Feature Books were among its flagship releases, with stories, art, and covers all drawn by E. C. Segar himself. The strips reprinted in this run were produced during the final productive years of Segar's career; he was hospitalized with leukemia in 1938 and died that same year, making these booklets some of the last commercial presentations of his original work to reach readers in close proximity to its creation. The large tabloid-adjacent format — approximately 9 by 12 inches, black-and-white interiors — was typical of McKay's Feature Book line and predated the standardized comic-book trim size that would come to dominate the industry.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published 1938 by David McKay Publishing as part of the Feature Book line, the first U.S. comic-book series devoted entirely to a single character per issue.
- All story content, artwork, and cover art created by E. C. Segar, reprinting his Thimble Theatre daily newspaper strips.
- Features Poopdeck Pappy — Popeye's irascible, misanthropic father, created by Segar in 1936 and the last major recurring character he introduced before his death — in a prominent role.
- Poopdeck Pappy debuted in the 1936 Thimble Theatre storyline 'The Search for Popeye's Poppa,' in which Popeye used Eugene the Jeep's supernatural knowledge to locate his long-lost father on Barnacle Island.
- Eugene the Jeep — the fourth-dimensional, orchid-eating animal gifted to Olive Oyl by her Uncle Ben — had first appeared in the Thimble Theatre strip on March 16, 1936, and is featured in this issue alongside Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Poopdeck Pappy.
- Eugene the Jeep's name has been widely theorized to have inspired the nickname of the Willys MB military vehicle, because WWII soldiers reportedly compared the go-anywhere machine to the go-anywhere magical creature.
- Segar's death in 1938 — the same year this book was published — meant that strips collected in this issue and its immediate predecessors represent some of the final completed Thimble Theatre continuities from comics' most celebrated Popeye creator.
- The Feature Book format (approximately 9 by 12 inches, black-and-white, squarebound) was a precursor to the standardized comic-book format and served as an important transitional artifact in the early history of American comic book publishing.
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