Character

Popeye

Popeye walked into E. C. Segar’s newspaper strip in 1929 and promptly stole it. A one-eyed sailor with a mutter and a pipe, he looked unfinished on purpose: feathers for arms until the spinach hit, then a forearm like a ship’s crane.

The animated shorts of the 1930s made the can of spinach a special effect. A gulp, a trumpet sting, and the world bent around a punch. That gag also leaked into real life. American spinach sales jumped, and a vegetable became a superpower with a label.

He earns a pedestal because he is older than most television toons and still readable in three lines: hat, squint, pipe. Toughness here is comic and specific. Popeye does not pose as a hero. He just refuses to stay down, then explains himself in a language only half the audience can parse — which is part of the charm.