One thing i have always wondered about popeye and his spinage was does silverbeat have the same effect since they are pretty much the same thing
In Popeye’s first adventure in the Thimble Theater comic strip he saved himself after being shot several times by rubbing the head of Bernice the whiffle hen. Anyone who rubbed the head of a whiffle hen would be blessed with good luck, which Popeye needed to survive. This magic bird was not the source of his strength - it simply gave him enough mojo to keep living with several bulletholes in him.
Popeye sometimes ate spinach in Thimble Theater, but in the strip it usually didn’t give him an instantaneous burst of strength. Popeye was really strong all the time. He was a fighter - he would regularly get into brawls with guys several times bigger than him, and would single-handedly mop up saloons full of tough cowboys and ships full of murderous pirates.
It was the cartoons that made a big deal out of spinach. The bit where Popeye saves himself by downing a can of spinach wouldn’t work well in a comic strip setting. Segar tried it in Thimble Theater exactly once to my knowledge, then gave it up.
I think the Fleischers made a mistake in allowing anyone to gain strength from spinach. With the number of cartoons they made they had to look for sources of variation, and letting Olive Oyl, Swee’ Pea and Bluto eat the spinach allowed them to change the basic plot. But eventually this led to the can itself being the star of the show. It meant there wasn’t anything special about Popeye (other than being incredibly ugly and not being able to speak English well). Popeye without his spinach got weaker over time, to the point where he was a wimp until the can came out.
I have read in more than one place that Wimpy was based on “Windy Bill” Schuchert, the owner of an opera house in Chester, Illinois, where Segar grew up. Olive Oyl was based on Dora Paskel, who ran the town general store, and Popeye himself was based on Frank “Rocky” Fiegel, a local tough guy.