Popeye - Sailor man - Braccio di Ferro - Thimble Theater - Elzie Crisler Segar - Pisellino - Swee'Pee - Eugene the Jeep - J. Wellington Wimpy - Poldo Sbaffini - Olive Oyl - Olivia - Castor Oyl - Castor o Dante Bertolio - P. Zupe - Barbaspina - Brutus - Fusto - Id.-Id. - Alice - Poopdeck Pappy - Braccio di Legno - Spinaci - Spinach

Elzie Crisler Segar

Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Camptown, Illinois, on December 8th, 1894, or, somebody says, in Chester, Illinois, on September 8th,1894.

In youth he was a drummer and then he was a projectionist in a cinema (he had a tattoo with the letters MPO, the begin of Motion Picture Operator, on his arm).

The passion of cinema induced Segar to the “comics”: in 1916 he attended a correspondence course for designers organized by “Cartoonist W.L. Evan's System” in Chicago, in which he succeeded in 1918, recommended from R.F. Outcault, to publish every day his first work, “Charlie Chaplin's Comic Capers”; after, he published the Sunday page “Barry the Boop”.

Noticed and assumed from Hearst in Chicago, he created “Looping the Loop” and then, transferred to New York, he created “The Thimble Theater” (on December 19th,1919),
which it was published every day except Friday and Sunday (the first Sunday table was on April 18th, 1925).

“The Thimble Theatre” was about theatrical themes, but the Popeye’s incoming in the strip, realized by Segar in the texts and in the designs, induced him to change his work into an all-embracing adventure, purely funny.

On 24 December 24th, 1920, it was published “The Five-Fifteen”, a strip that was named “Sappo” in 1923 (from the name of the protagonist, a pendular employee); in 1926 it began “top” of the Sunday table of “The Thimble Theatre”, stopping the daily publication.

Segar died in Santa Monica, California, on October 13rd, 1938, in his villa.





Translation by Carlo Cianci