Popeye's creator, celebrated with a Google Doodle

Google doodle featuring E.C. Segar's Popeye Photograph: Public Domain

Elzie Crisler Segar might not be a household name, but the Popeye creator has become the latest person to be honoured with his own Google Doodle.

The internet search giant has depicted the rambunctious cartoon seaman in typically feisty pose on what would have been Segar's 115th birthday.

Popeye the Sailor – who famously attributed his strength "to the finish" to his consumption "of spinach" – first entered the public consciousness in January 1929, in Segar's newspaper comic strip Thimble Theatre.

The cartoonist was born in Illinois, US, on 8 December 1894, and showed a talent for drawing at a young age. Segar worked as a film projectionist while studying a correspondence course in cartooning, eventually moving to Chicago to pursue his career.

According to cartoon expert Ed Black, Popeye originally appeared as a supporting character in Thimble Theatre, which had already been running for ten years with a certain Olive Oyl as its heroine.

Popeye, as Segar had always intended, was written out of the strip once his character's sequence ended, but returned as the main character following complaints from readers. Olive Oyl became the plucky sailor's girlfriend, and has remained so ever since – despite her head occasionally being turned by love rival Bluto.

Spinach is the source of Popeye's muscular prowess – upon eating it, his biceps immediately swell to three times their normal size. Segar chose the vegetable due to an 1870 German study (which claimed it contained the same amount of iron as red meat).

The strength-giving properties of spinach were later revised however, after it was found a stray decimal point had led researchers to believe the vegetable contained ten times its actual iron content.

Segar died aged 43 on 13 October 1938, but Popeye has lived on, appearing in television cartoons, advertisements and, in 1980, a film starring Robin Williams.

[Via guardian.co.uk]