DC COMICS: Superman Family (Popeye the Sailor Man)

Superman Family in the media Popeye the Sailor Man is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and theatrical and television animated cartoons. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929; Popeye became the strip's title in later years. Although Segar's Thimble Theatre strip was in its tenth year when Popeye made his debut, the sailor quickly became the main focus of the strip and Thimble Theatre soon became one of King Features' most popular properties during the 1930s. Thimble Theatre was continued after Segar's death in 1938 by several writers and artists, most notably Segar's assistant Bud Sagendorf. The strip continues to appear in first-run installments in its Sunday edition, written and drawn by Hy Eisman. The daily strips are reprints of old Sagendorf stories. In 1933, Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios adapted the Thimble Theatre characters into a series of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures. These cartoons proved to be among the most popular of the 1930s, and the Fleischers—and later Paramount's own Famous Studios—continued production through 1957. These cartoon shorts are now owned by Turner Entertainment, a subsidiary of Time Warner, and distributed by sister company Warner Bros. Entertainment.

PLOT:
Famous Studios Popeye the Sailor cartoon. Arguably one of the best Popeye shorts ever made. At this time, Paramount/Famous Studios still held onto the Superman lisence but had stopped making Superman cartoons due to their high production costs. They put it to good use here in a semi-crossover between two of the world's most renown "super" men. Olive Oyl is in love with the man of steel, and an eavesdropping Bluto shows up dressed as Superman to impress Olive. What follows is a series of challenges where Popeye sets out to prove he is a better man than "Stupidman". The Paramount titles on this cartoon are the original ones (one of the few Technicolor Popeye's widely available with original titles), and this cartoon was sourced for the Paramount titles on the color Famous shorts featured on most Season 4 episodes of "The Popeye Show".