Popeye’s pappy (who, at least in the Segar years, was always addressed and referred to as “Poppa”) was introduced to Thimble Theatre somewhere around 1936, after Segar was ordered to tone down Popeye’s less savory attributes (gambling, fighting, getting arrested). Segar’s response was, while turning Popeye into a children’s hero, to transfer the darker side to Pappy – thus keeping that element in the strip while cleaning Popeye up a little.

Prior to this, Popeye had stated that he was an orphan. To this day I don’t believe his mother was ever found; in an early Pappy continuity, he tells Popeye “Yer mother was as good a gal that ever lived”, in the past tense, implying that she was no longer alive.

http://www.math.pitt.edu/~bard/bardware/popeye/popeye3b.gif

John Ellis says:
June 7th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Just stumbled upon your blog looking for Mark Trail strips. I need to say that you should look for friends that have no JPG tag behind their names. MT is just a comic get over it!

“Oh, no, you di’nt!”

Sadly, it’s worse than that — what you see is the result of an early cloning experiment gone horribly wrong. Pappy, his wife(?), Popeye, the unfortunately named nephews — and those are the ones allowed out in public; don’t ask about the rest — all are the ungodly result of a demented witch who cloned an malformed prototype as seen here! (Check out the nose, man! The nose is the giveaway!)