In early 20th Century theater and film, the “sissy” was the dreaded antithesis of two-fisted pulp hyper-masculinity, at best, and at worst was a stereotypical euphemism for what was unspoken in general culture, homosexuality. Wimpy, the dandyish, appetite-driven counterpoint to Popeye’s principled violence, is of course Popeye’s best tutor for all things “sissy.” To make this sexual dynamic even weirder we have Popeye’s Pappy bewildered by his prancing progeny. It reads like an unintended burlesque of Popeye “coming out”. Per a previous post, These dailies precede Popeye deceiving the underground demons to come up and fight.
It is important to note that this gender-bending sequence was followed immediately by another adventure cycle involving Popeye getting the crap beaten out of him in a land of highly muscled women. And this is all happening right after E.C. Segar’s death in October 1938. The strip was being continued unsigned by assistants for the time being.
- Gal Gangs, Femdoms and Queen Bees: Matriarchal Mayhem in the 1930sWomen-led “Amazon” worlds popped up in a ranges of comic strips during the 1930s and 40s, and they voiced a range of ideas about the prospects for matriarchal rule. In an earlier article we explored… Read more: Gal Gangs, Femdoms and Queen Bees: Matriarchal Mayhem in the 1930s
- Comics at Scale: Checking In With Peter Maresca at Sunday Press BooksIn our ongoing series of interviews with publishers who are keeping comics history alive, we go oversized this week. Since it started publishing reprints of classic newspaper comics 20 years ago with Little Nemo, Sunday… Read more: Comics at Scale: Checking In With Peter Maresca at Sunday Press Books
- Get Me to The Church on Time: Decoding the Postwar Cartoon Marriage Boom“It is a old comical strip trick – pretendin’ th’ hero gotta git married.” It keeps “stupid readers excited,” Li’l Abner claims in 1952. Days later he unwittingly weds Daisy Mae, ending a nearly 20… Read more: Get Me to The Church on Time: Decoding the Postwar Cartoon Marriage Boom
- The Year in Pre-Code Comic Book Reprints, 2025I am an EC chauvinist. I should cop to this before rounding up the notable pre-code comic book reprints from the last year. For decades now I have been devouring the many crime, horror, sci-fi,… Read more: The Year in Pre-Code Comic Book Reprints, 2025
- Your 2936 Model iPad…Via 1936When Frank Godwin sent his adventure comic strip heroine Connie Kurridge a thousand yeas into the future, this amateur engineer had a field day imagining technologies of the next millennium. During the extended story arc,… Read more: Your 2936 Model iPad…Via 1936
Discover more from Panels & Prose
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Panels & Prose 