Four Color #17
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFour Color #17 holds a clear structural milestone in Popeye's comic-book publishing history: it is the first issue of Dell's 1942 Four Color series to bill Popeye as a titular character, co-headlining with Wimpy, establishing the template for the roughly biannual Popeye entries that would follow through issue #168. By packaging a broad selection of Thimble Theatre newspaper strips from the late 1930s and 1940 into a single squarebound Dell format, the issue served as many readers' primary access point to E.C. Segar's ensemble — Poopdeck Pappy, Swee'pea, the Oyl family, Rough-House, and Pooky Jones — at a time when the animated Paramount shorts had already made Popeye a household name but the original strip continuities were far less widely seen. The issue also anchors the transitional moment between Segar's foundational strip work and the original comic-book storytelling that Bud Sagendorf would eventually introduce with issue #113.
In a 1943 Four Color comic, Popeye finds himself challenged by billionaire George Squeejik, who offers a million dollars to anyone who can defeat him. The fight begins at a restaurant, where Squeejik's henchmen—each more absurd than the last, including one who trains on carrots—take turns trying to knock out the spinach-powered sailor. Bill Zaboly’s dynamic art brings the over-the-top showdown to life, with bold lines and energetic action from start to finish.
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The content of Four Color #17 is drawn from King Features Syndicate's Thimble Theatre newspaper strips, with the indicia copyright spanning 1937 through 1940 — a window that begins in the final year of E.C. Segar's life (he died in October 1938) and runs through the early tenure of his successor artists. The Amazon product listing credits Doc Winner alongside Segar; Winner drew the strip unsigned in 1938–1939 before Bill Zaboly took over the daily in December 1939, meaning the reprinted strips almost certainly represent work by more than one hand. Dell's editorial team re-lettered — and in several stories also edited — the dialogue throughout the issue when adapting the syndicate strips to the comic-book page, a standard practice for Dell's strip-reprint titles of the era.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First issue of Dell's 1942 Four Color series to feature Popeye as a titled co-star, billed in the indicia as 'POPEYE AND WIMPY, No. 17.'
- Content reprints Thimble Theatre newspaper strips copyrighted 1937–1940 by King Features Syndicate, Inc., covering the final Segar era and the immediate post-Segar transition.
- The issue was published circa 1943, placing it during World War II, when Paramount's Popeye theatrical shorts were at their wartime-propaganda peak — giving the character unusually high cultural visibility.
- Characters appearing include Popeye, Wimpy, Poopdeck Pappy, Olive Oyl, Swee'pea, Rough-House, Pooky Jones, Cole Oyl, and Nana Oyl — a near-complete snapshot of the Segar ensemble as it existed in the late 1930s.
- Poopdeck Pappy, a major presence in the issue's stories, had first appeared in the Thimble Theatre strip on October 25, 1936, created by E.C. Segar as Popeye's long-lost 99-year-old father.
- Dell re-lettered and in some cases edited the strip dialogue throughout the issue when reformatting from newspaper to comic-book dimensions.
- This issue was the first of eight Popeye appearances in the Dell 1942 Four Color series (issues #17, 26, 43, 70, 113, 127, 145, and 168), running approximately twice yearly from 1943 to 1947 before Dell launched a standalone Popeye title in 1948.
- The early issues in this run, including #17, reprinted existing strips; the shift to all-new original stories by Bud Sagendorf did not occur until Four Color #113.
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Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
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When Popeye refuses to let billionaire George Squeejik have his table at a restaurant, Squeejik offers $1,000,000 to any fighter who can whip Popeye. He fights several brutes, including one who trains on carrots.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
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