Free Comic Friday: Eye Lie Popeye

“Eye Lie Popeye” #1 (Preview)
Story and art: Marcus Williams
Other colors: Rodney Velchez
Editor: Alex Garcia

The only thing more surprising than finding a contemporary, manga-inspired Popeye comic on Free Comic Book Day 2024? Really liking it.

I've known the broad strokes about Popeye for a while, even if watching his animated adventures repeatedly as a child never did translate to an appreciation of spinach, at least in its canned incarnation.* I also appreciated the sailor man's ability to turn a phrase, with a quip from an episode in which he tries to stop a runaway tank that crashes through a house – “Thanks for your house brutality” – enduring my memory.

I also can't help but associate him with God. Not because Popeye is an all-knowing, omnipotent being with bottomless wells of love and grace, but because, after a pastor explained how a translation of God's name YHWH is “I AM WHO I AM,” my grandmother leaned over to me and whispered, “I thought that was Popeye.” So, to anybody wondering why I'm like this: She helped.

I also had a co-worker who posed the question, “Is Popeye a superhero?” This generated more thought and discussion than it probably should have. On the one hand, he does have superhuman strength triggered by an outside force. On the other, he's usually not fighting for truth, justice and the American way so much as he is beating up the guy who his girlfriend is constantly leaving him for, at least in my experience. Superman, he's not. Heck, I may have seen more evidence of nobility from Deadpool.

I was intrigued when I saw Massive Publishing's “Eye Lie Popeye” FCBD Preview Edition this year among the offerings with Marvel, DC, Archie and Image. I don't always appreciate when properties aimed at children are “updated” by making them dark or crude or otherwise inaccessible to their traditional demographics, but I do like when people expand on or take different looks at concepts while respecting what came before. From what I read, “Eye Lie Popeye” falls in the latter category.

Now, I'm no Popeye scholar. I have to admit I didn't even know he was missing an eye. I just thought he squinted a lot.

But the tale of how Popeye lost his eye is the driving force of this story – and maybe the reason the character's name is preceded by the words “eye” and “lie” in the title?

The issue opens with Popeye and Bluto battered and beaten as a glowing, demonic figure looms over them. Popeye crawls to a can of spinach, but there's nothing left in it. As the figure threatens him in dialogue that feels much darker than what I remember from TBS reruns, he's interrupted by the sound “Jeep, jeep,” which I recognize as that magical critter that hung around Popeye sometimes. I believe his name was Eugene?**

Then we flash back 24 hours, where reporter Judy P'tooty arrives at Popeye's Toot Toot Tugboat Inc. to interview him about how he lost his eye. Despite being a “local award-winning journalist for The Puddleburg Splash,” she's a bit starstruck by meeting him.

Olive Oyl is more than happy to tell the tale, and, over Judy's protests, she spins a yarn about Popeye battling a giant mer-man who plans to take one of her eyes. Popeye defeats the goliath, but not before being sucker punched and apparently losing his eye. What's even more impressive is that Olive says he “punched that mer-monstrosity so hard, it exploded into itty-bitty cans of tuna fish!” It's illustrated with a simple “pow” and then Popeye and Olive holding said cans. It sounds like something right out of the cartoons, but it's rendered so casually that it fits right in the atmosphere Williams is establishing as both writer and artist.

Bluto shows up and promises to tell Judy the real story about how Popeye lost his eye, if only she'll take his picture in front of his business and include it in the article. Sidestepping the ethical quandary of mixing advertising with reporting, she tells Bluto she can't promise anything until she knows if he's telling the truth.

Bluto proceeds to paint himself as a nice guy (the art says different) who attempted to save Popeye from a giant squid that tried to use the sailor man as a shield. Bluto claims he punched Popeye so hard it knocked the squid for a loop too, alas at the cost of his eye.

J. Wellington Wimpy is next in line, even as Judy is saying to someone on the phone that she “located each stash and eliminated them.” But Wimpy hopes telling his story will earn him a hamburger from Judy, so he plows ahead with recounting how Popeye was battling some winged villain and placed himself between a bolt of energy and the burger-loving bystander, sacrificing his eye “so that I might live to eat another hamburger.”

It works fine as a familiar comedic tale of multiple people sharing their own version of events, but there was that dark opening sequence and Judy's suspicious behavior. Judy becomes annoyed with the competing stories and glares at Popeye, asking the location of the eye. She reveals herself to be P'tooty the Jade Witch, sent by an elder witch known as the Sea Hag. A muscular figure that reminds me of something from “Dragonball,” despite never having watched “Dragonball,” emerges from the water, demanding to know the location of both “the bejeweled Eye of Haggert” and the Jeep.

Before Popeye can raise a fist, Bluto offers to pummel the visitor. His blow has no effect, and the new arrival swats him away, smashing the burly brawler into a nearby tractor trailer.

Popeye sends Olive to carry out some whispered task, then challenges the watery attacker himself. He has no more success than Bluto, who returns to the fight before being leveled by a brutal headbutt. Popeye reveals he has an emergency mini can of spinach under his hat and gulps it down. He powers up, then starts winding up his fist for a powerful punch as his mysterious foe strides toward him...

And that's it! “To be continued!?!?”

I was curious to read this, but I did NOT expect to be left with a cliffhanger like that, genuinely disappointed I wouldn't get to see how this played out.

The art is dynamic and engaging from the start, evoking contemporary and classic in equal measure. This feels like Popeye but in no way dated. The first page is striking in how dark and un-Popeye-like it feels without seeming out of place.

Williams' writing pulls the same balancing act. There is humor and cartoonish playfulness but a genuine feeling of foreboding and suspense … in a Popeye comic! I laughed out loud when Bluto delivered a crushing blow to his foe from the sea to no effect, then turned and said, “So, yeah, it looks like this guy is a bit resistant to physical damage.”

I found the portrayal of Bluto interesting, inasmuch as I remember the character being both friend and foe to Popeye (sometimes in the same episode) of a variety of cartoons that appeared to have little or no continuity (nor did they need any to be entertaining). He's clearly a rival, but when the fish hits the fan, he jumps in to help, probably 90% to stroke his own ego, but it felt like maybe he recognized there was a bigger problem here.

My only complaint is the lettering. It seems odd that the captions and dialogue in a comic from “Massive” Publishing are so darn tiny. I had to squint a bit, and, yes, as my youngest – and even some co-workers are happy to point out – I'm old, but the letters are also very small.

But that doesn't stop me from wanting to read more, not so much to find out how Popeye lost the eye I didn't know he didn't have, but to see how Williams continues to deliver this unexpectedly engaging story. And for a Free Comic Book Day issue, it doesn't get much better than that.

* - Baby spinach on a Subway sub or wrap tastes inoffensive and lets me at least pretend I'm eating healthy

** - Google says... yes!