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Popeye’s Cartoon Club debuts January 17

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Popeye’s Cartoon Club, the new weekly online comic strip, is set to debut from King Features Syndicate on January 17, 2019, the 90th anniversary of Popeye’s first appearance in Thimble Theatre.
A page is set up on the KFS site.

As explained in an early December 2018 New York Times article the strip will feature a rotating roster of cartoonists taking a weekly turn at the sailor man. Among the announced cartoonists contributing:

The artists are comic book and comic strip creators including Alex Hallatt, Erica Henderson and Tom Neely. In one installment, Roger Langridge reveals the secret of Olive Oyl’s youthful glow after Popeye discovers her 1919 birth certificate. In another, Lar deSouza has the “Queer Eye”-like Internet Fancy Guys visit Popeye for a makeover — and they decide he is already on trend.

Jeffrey Brown offers a more classic take on Popeye’s relationship when Olive Oyl catches him gazing wistfully at a photograph of her. She assumes he’s remembering good times, but the final panel reveals the truth. Popeye thinks, “I wonder if Olive Oyl would bring me some more spinnich.”

The N. Y. Times article says the weekly online version will target an audience that “skews a little older.” What exactly that means is not known, the new animated Popeye cartoons are for a young audience.

The title has been added to King Features’ Comics Kingdom list, joining Macanudo as a “NEW” feature and Intelligent Life as the only other webcomic on the page.

It is not known what order the cartoonists will appear or who the others will be. Well, that’s not quite true, Jim Engel on his Facebook page has announced that he will contribute a strip to the project. Jim had contributed to the Popeye comic books that reprinted Bud Sagendorf stories.

 

Update (January 17, 2019):

Insider was granted access to a few of the upcoming Popeye’s Cartoon Club comic strips. One is the Liniers‘ strip currently up at the site. Four other strips premiering at the Insider site are by cartoonists Lar deSouza, Erica Henderson, Jay Fosgitt, and Carol Lay – along with the cartoonists’ bona fides.  At least a few are featuring gags dependent on the long history of Popeye and Thimble Theatre.

Below the Jay Fosgitt Popeye’s Cartoon Club comic strip.

Other characters you can expect to see include O. G. Wotasnozzle by the aforementioned Jim Engel:

 

A partial list of Contributors to Popeye’s Cartoon Club is here.

 

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Comments 6

  2. Is this just promotional? How do you monetize an online only comic?

  4. Check out the layout of the strips at the Popeye Cartoon Club, the Insider, and here. All are set up in a grid that can be rearranged to three rows, a proportion perfect for publishing in a comic book/graphic novel-sized collection. That was probably one idea for future $$$.

  5. The “worth” of ComicsKingdom as calculated by that site is pure speculation, an estimate (as their own how-we-do-it explains) of advertising potential, at which I’d say $291,000 annually wouldn’t be terrible.

    But they also explain that they don’t take subscriptions into account and, not knowing how many people are subscribing means their calculation is far more speculative than if they were simply looking at web traffic and guessing.

  6. Don’t get me wrong. Any revenue made digitally is a bonus but to split 290K between all those artists already on the site would be a pretty small pool for all those cartoonists. A book may be the answer but even if they sell well you’re splitting a publishing royalty which is somewhere between 10 and 15 percent usually and between 52 artists. What can it really mean to either side? Promotion for King Syndicate. Maybe a few hundred bucks for the guest artist.

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