BOOK REVIEW! SAGENDORF'S POPEYE!!

POPEYE: THE GREAT COMIC BOOK TALES OF BUD SAGENDORF
Edited and Designed by Craig Yoe
Produced by Cliza Gussoni
Yoe Books! and IDW Publishing
Introduction by Jerry Beck

No one has done more for lovers of kids' comics over the passed few years that Craig Yoe. With collections featuring the artwork of Otto Messmer, Dan DeCarlo, Dick Briefer Belly DeBeck, Milt Gross; not to mention two great anthologies of kids' comics (The Golden Collection of Klassic Krazy Kool Kids Komics & The Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories), one must certainly say he has done his duty and then some.

Thank heavens Mr. Yoe is not one to rest on his laurels.

I recently received his most recent effort, Popeye: The Great Comic Book Tales of Bud Sagendorf and, frankly, have had a hard time putting it down long enough to write this post. This, dear friends, is the one I have been waiting for.

Simply stated, Forrest "Bud" Sagendorf is one of my favorite cartoonists of all time, ranking in my hall of pleasures alongside Jack Bradbury, Howie Post, Otto Messmer, Carl Barks, and a very few others - and he is certainly far and away my favorite Popeye cartoonist (with apologies to the great Segar). When Craig Yoe told me a while ago he was planning a Sagendorf collection, I could scarcely believe by ears. I thought I was the only Sagendorf freak in the world. Well, I have learned since that, like me, tons of fans love Sagendorf's Popeye - his brilliantly lively storytelling and his relaxed, clean artwork. Friends, our day has come!

Like all of Mr. Yoe's books published by IDW with the Yoe Books! imprint, Tales of Bud Sagendorf is beautifully bound and presented with great peripheral artwork (including some B&W pages that showcases Sagendorf's gorgeous inking to a T). The stories are perfectly reproduced on paper with a matte finish, so the look of the original comic is not lost to a shiny surface given to over saturation. And the stories are absolutely prime Sagendorf Popeye, every one the cream of those great Dell comics, of which Sagendorf wrote and drew over 100 issues.

Included also is a fine introduction by writer and animation historian, Jerry Beck, as well as an excellent, lengthy essay by Editor Yoe (in which Yoe states correctly that Sagendorf's comic book work for Dell places him in the same "rarefied genius status" as Carl Barks and John Stanley).

I could not be more happy with this book. You will be, too! This book is absolutely, positively recommended by the Big Blog!!

Let's celebrate with a Sagendorf story not in the book, "Ship Shape," which came from Popeye No. 23, Jan.-March 1953: