More than a decade before he created the world's most famous cartoon sailor, Elzie Crisler Segar began his comics career in the movies. He drew cartoons for silent movie theater slides, the Charlie Chaplin comic strip, and a daily strip about Chicago's movies and entertainment. Then, in 1919, he penned his own "small screen" creation for the newspapers, Thimble Theatre, where Popeye was to be born a decade later. This comprehensive volume features examples of all of E.C. Segar's early comics and illustrations, with over 100 pre-Popeye Thimble Theatre Sunday pages including the complete run of the famed Western desert saga, a series that rivals his later work in superb art, storytelling, and humor.
Newly revised and expanded, this new printing contains ten additional pages plus a 1920s-style Sunday comics section insert paying tribute to Segar and his comic creations featuring Charlie Chaplin's Comic Capers and Popeye's "The Jeep."
Text and illustrations offer an in-depth history and commentary on the life and work of E. C. Segar by historians Paul C. Tumey and Jeet Heer, and best-selling author and journalist Michael Tisserand. Thimble Theatre is an essential part of any comics lover's library.
Author Biography:
E.C. Segar (1894-1938), creator of Popeye, is a member of the Will Eisner Awards Hall of Fame. He was born in Chester, IL in 1894 and passed away in his longtime home of Santa Monica, CA. The National Cartoonists Society created the Elzie Segar Award in his honor, which was awarded annually to a cartoonist who has made a unique and outstanding contribution to the profession. Peter Maresca is the multiple Eisner and Harvey Award-winning publisher of high-quality, full-sized collections of classic American newspaper strips. His Sunday Press books represent a high-water mark in the reproduction and preservation of American comic strips. Maresca changed the concept of comic reprints in 2005 with his original-sized Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays, Winsor McCay's groundbreaking strip. He continued with Sundays with Walt & Skeezix (Frank King's Gasoline Alley), George Herriman's Krazy Kat, Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, and a dozen others. Maresca lives a relatively non-virtual life in Palo Alto, CA. Paul C. Tumey is a writer and artist in Seattle, WA. He was nominated for an Eisner Award as co-editor of Foolish Questions & Other Odd Observations by Rube Goldberg, co-edited and wrote for The Art of Rube Goldberg, and wrote the introduction to LOAC Essentials: The Bungle Family and Thimble Theatre and the pre-Popeye Cartoons of E.C. Segar. He also currently writes a column for The Comics Journal. Jeet Heer is a Canadian author, comics critic, literary critic and journalist. He is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation magazine and a former staff writer at The New Republic. The publications he has written for include The National Post, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Heer was a member of the 2016 jury for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His anthology A Comic Studies Reader, with Kent Worcester, won the 2010 Rollins Award. Michael Tisserand is the author of the Eisner Award-winning biography, Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White, one of The New York Times' one hundred notable books for 2017. His other award-winning books include The Kingdom of Zydeco, the Hurricane Katrina memoir Sugarcane Academy; and My Father When Young, a collection of his father's 1950s-era Kodachome photography. Tisserand's current projects include books about New Orleans cartoonist Bunny Matthews and the making of Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. A long-time New Orleans resident, he now resides in Minnesota. His website is michaeltisserand.com.
