Could it be the storyline “Olive’s False Lover” from June-Sept 1929? That would have been just before the introduction of Popeye.
Dice Island was the first Popeye story, and the story I’m looking for preceded that.
I have to admit it’s fun talking about Thimble Theater.
Haven’t heard of Thimble Theater in years. That conversion to Cinerama never paid off.
At the very beginning, back in 1919, Harold Hamgravy was the main character. He competed with the strip’s villain, Willie Wormwood. One of the issues they competed over was trying to win the affection of Olive Oyl.
Olive’s brother, Castor Oyl, was introduced a few weeks into the strip but was not initially a major character.
When segars assistant made a history of the popeye strip he said mainly the strip before popeye was various treasure hunts and this page seems to back that up but heres a list of almost all of the story lines
you might try this also: * Thimble Theatre comic strips at Comics Kingdom (Classic strips by Segar; complete archive available via premium membership)
heres some very early strips … to bad the blog is dead tho
Screwball Comics: 12 Batty Pre-Popeye Thimble Theatre Strips by Segar (1920)
the price for this is for collectors only …
I’m glad I got it when it first came out. It’s a big deluxe book.
I wonder if the library could get it … they had a series of books on the old donald duck strips done by banks but they couldnt be checked out …
I wonder why Fantagraphics hasn’t published a companion set of books of pre-Popeye Thimble Theatre to supplement the excellent Complete Popeye. I hope that happens!
I forgot about this thread. Sorry. Anyway, I found the story! It was driving me crazy that I couldn’t find it. It was reprinted in the Comics Journal #271, 2005. It’s good ish with a lot of good stuff besides the TT story.
When King Features Syndicate launched a new line of Popeye animated cartoons in the early 1960s, they made a point of reintroducing several minor characters that would only have been familiar to readers of the classic comic strip. For crowd scenes showing a random assemblage of people they included unnamed references to old Thimble Theater characters including Ham Gravy.
It seems Snidely Whiplash drew heavily from Bondo Bitter.
Also,
“Edison was a piker”
