Popeye is considered by many to be the first superhero to possess superhuman strength. As we know him, he gained his strength by eating a can of spinach. This wasn’t however, always Popeye’s path to strength. In earliest comic strips (circa 1920’s), Popeye became strong by rubbing a lucky chicken named Bernice the Whiffle Hen.
Thimble Theatre introduces Olive Oyl
In 1919, King Features Syndicate, a Hearst corporation, published a daily strip called The Thimble Theatre that showed comic strip characters acting out plays like actors on a stage. In the December 19, 1919 strip, the characters Olive Oyl and her boyfriend Harold Hamgravy were introduced.
Popeye makes his first appearance in Thimble Theatre
The Olive Oyl and Harold Hamgravy characters ran for nearly a decade when on January 17, 1929, a squinting sailor named Popeye was introduced. Popeye was hired by Olive Oyl’s brother, Castor Oyl, to sail a ship to Dice Island where Castor intended to make a ton of money in the casinos by rubbing the head of a luck hen named Bernice the Whiffle Hen. The strip below shows the introduction of Popeye.
Later in the Thimble Theatre series, Popeye is shot but survives after rubbing the head of the Whiffle Hen. The act of rubbing the hen also appears to give Popeye superhuman strength, which he uses to knockout the shooter.
Popeye hints his strength derives from spinach
A few years later, we are told in one short strip, that Popeye’s superhuman strength comes from eating spinach.
Less than a year later, Thimble Theatre protrays Popeye eating a bowl of spinach and obtaining superhuman strength (which he uses to knock out a man in the restaurant).
A few months later, Popeye explains that the vitamin A in spinach is what gives him strength.
By 1937, most of the Popeye cast as we know them had been introduced in the pages of Thimble Theatre – Alice the Goon, Wimpy, Swee’Pea, and The Jeep made it to the animated series.
On July 14, 1933, Popeye made his silver screen debut in a Betty Boop cartoon entitled “Popeye the Sailor”. This first animated appearance also introduced the Popeye theme song, “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man. I’m strong to the finish ’cause I eats me spinach”.
Ten days later after the silver screen appearance, back in the comic strip, Popeye finds the “infink” Swee’Pea on his doorstep and adopts him.
The next year Popeye received his own cartoon series.
