J 🌘

His real name was Frank "Rocky" Fiegel. He was born in 1868 in Poland and, as a child, immigrated to the United States with his parents, who settled down in a small town in Illinois. As a young man, Rocky went to sea. After a 20 year career as a sailor in the Merchant Marines, Fiegel retired. He was later hired by Wiebusch's Tavern in the city of Chester, Illinois as a ‘Bouncer’ to maintain order in the rowdy bar.

Rocky quickly developed a reputation for always being involved in fighting(and usually winning). As a result, he had a deformed eye ("Pop-eye"). He also ‘always’ smoked his pipe, so he always spoke out of one side of his mouth. In his spare time as a Bouncer, Rocky would entertain the customers by regaling them with exciting stories of adventures he claimed to have had over his career as a sailor crossing the ‘Seven Seas.’

The creator of Popeye, Elzie Crisler Segar, grew up in Chester and, as a young man, met Rocky at the tavern and would sit for hours listening to the old sailor’s amazing ‘sea’ stories.’ Years later, Segar became a cartoonist and developed a comic strip called ‘Thimble Theater.’ He honoured Fiegel him by asking if he could model his new comic strip character, ‘Popeye the Sailor Man,’ after him. Naturally Fiegel was flattered and agreed.

Segar claimed that ‘Olive Oyl,’ along with other characters, was also loosely based on an actual person. She was Dora Paskel, owner of a small grocery store in Chester. She apparently actually looked much like the Olive Oyl character in his comics. He claimed she even dressed much the same way.

Through the years, Segar kept in touch with Rocky and always helped him with money; giving him a small percentage of what he earned from his ‘Popeye’ illustrations.

It occurred to me that I'd never actually drawn these two together, so I decided fixing that would be a good way to end Pride Month.

The Byrne/Wolfman version specifically, rather than the modern guy who combines elements of both? Oh, the pre-Crisis Luthor would absolutely detest him, and certainly wouldn’t hesitate to crush him underfoot for acting under his name. As Maggin’s Last Son Of Krypton put it:

“There were other super-criminal geniuses in the world; he had met some of them, dealt with them on occasion. They were chairmen of great corporations, grand masters of martial arts disciplines, heads of departments in executive branches of governments, princes, presidents, prelates, and a saint or two. Unlike Luthor, these men and women chose to retain their respectability.  They had trouble coping with honesty.

a few highlights:

Mousetrapped #4: "An Ear to Bend"

One thing about early Mickey Mouse that not enough people appreciate (outside of die-hard Disney or old animation fans) is how much of his cartoons were the hard work of one man...

Ub Iwerks.

Iwerks and Walt Disney met as teenagers doing art in Kansas City and started a partnership early on. When Disney decided to get into animation, Iwerks followed him. Iwerks worked with Disney on almost all of his early projects - the Laugh-O-Grams, Alice Comedies, and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. When Disney lost control of Oswald (that's a hell of a story, but I don't think I'm competent enough to tell it), Iwerks stuck by Disney's side.

The animation you see in the original "Steamboat Willie" cartoon? That's mostly Iwerks.

Iwerks continued to do the heavy living for the next two years until he and Disney had a falling out. Iwerks would go on to start his own studio and create Flip the Frog (two years til you're public domain, Flip... I'm waiting). His studio never became as big as Disney or other companies. He'd do work for a few other studios before returning to Disney in 1940.

It's really a shame that Iwerks doesn't get remembered for his contributions to animation, not on the scale he deserves, anyway. Maybe I'm out of pocket here, but as much as the Walt Disney Company loves to tout how it all started with a mouse, they should honestly remember and promote Iwerks just as much.

Sorry for rambling.

Thunderbean Animation did a full bluray set of Flip the Frog's cartoons, which you can buy here if you like.

Mousetrapped #2: "Nothing So Sweet"

The bikini top she wore in Steamboat Willie is still weird to me. Why not give her a shirt?

I should add, I drew a while back and was still getting a feel for the characters. So, I apologize for a weirdly lanky pair of mice.

In the last day, I've had a few people ask what I'm planning for this comic. Honestly? I just want to do a fun adventure comic. I am not interested in a hardcore, gritty, dark version of the characters - although I stand by my belief there was a dark tone to most early cartoons. Will there be dark moments? Yes. But I don't want to do what most people are doing and paint Mickey as a villain or have him go to "extreme" choices for the sake of, "Look, he's public domain now, I can have Mickey Mouse say and do shocking things."

Disney Comics were a huge part of my childhood reading. I still enjoy them greatly. So getting to work with, well, only a couple of the charaters is nice. And I want to just tell fun stories. Will there be some darker tones? At times. Some horror? Everything I do tends to at least dip into horror, but I'd want it to be stuff appropriate from the 1920s.

As of today, the Mickey Mouse cartoon, "Steamboat Willie" is public domain. While all the trademarks and more recent copyrights remain in tact, I decided to do a comic that follows what happened after the steamboat docked. I've loved Disney comics since I was a kid, but as most of them are made in Italy and later translated, I've long given up on the dream of writing or drawing them officially.