Email Friend | Print Article | | Share Share  July 10, 2009
Popeye Shows the Way  Hillel Stavis Samuel Huntington? 
Montgomery Watt?  Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq? Andrew Bostom?  Are
you looking for the most perspicacious source on historical
Islam?  Forget about ‘em.  Turn to Max and Dave Fleischer, two
Manhattan cartoonists from the 1930's and their monumental
analysis of The Jihad:  Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty
Thieves (1937)  Denied a place at the Disney table (it was
reputed that Signor Disney cared little for followers of the
Mosaic Persuasion), the Frères Fleischer started King Features
Syndicate during the depression, featuring the intrepid mariner
who would prove to be Mickey Mouse's chief rival for the next
two decades.  Popeye the Sailor Man was born to Midwesterner
Elzie Segar (pronounced like the proverbial 5 cent CEE-gar) in
the late 1920's.  His entourage, brilliantly assembled to
resemble the eccentricities that were the stuff of an American
cultural stew that consisted of an anorex