MONDO POPEYE

Bobby London responds to Alternet.org’s What’s In Popeye’s Pipe?, a piece we linked to earlier this week, which referenced London’s run on Popeye:

The Bolivian Spinach Popeye strip I drew which was referred to in the Cannabis Culture article was, of course, a Miami Vice parody – it was the ’80s, remember? – but, hey, sorry folks, it was just spinach! The cartoon was okayed by very Republican KFS editor Bill Yates, who was not a fan of blatant drug references. If it had been the real dope Popeye was after, the story wouldn’t have been a satire. Dana Larsen apparently suffers from short-term memory loss because this is what I told him when he emailed me about the cartoon last year but, unfortunately, my viewpoints on my own work were rather conveniently left out of the article.To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a boatload of spinach is just a boatload of spinach.

London was a pioneering underground cartoonist (The Air Pirates) and a founding contributor to the original NATIONAL LAMPOON. His most recent credits include storyboards and writing for DEXTER’S LAB and POWERPUFF GIRLS, and character design (King Neptune and Mindy) for THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE. He’s still drawing great strips for Playboy (DIRTY DUCK) and Nickelodeon Magazine (CODY). His time (a 6-year stint, 1986 – 1992) on Thimble Theatre starring Popeye (“my billing….lots of people drew POPEYE, but I drew THIMBLE THEATER“) returned a refreshing Segar feel back to the strip. A collection of his Popeye strips are available on book form, under the title MONDO POPEYE.