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JERRY BECK
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AMID AMIDI
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Blow Me Down!
by jerry
August 28, 2009 7:00 pm


This year, Popeye celebrated his 80th birthday (his first comic strip appearance was on January 17th, 1929). This painting, from 2007 by monster-movie make-up guru Rick Baker, shows what the sailor-man would actually look like at this age.
Pretty disturbing.

(Thanks, Doran Gaston)

08/28/09  7:03pm
Robert Schaad says:

Hoping that Rick did not also do paintings of Poopdeck Pappy, Olive, etc.

08/28/09  7:18pm
Hunter says:

Sooo scary! I would not like to run into him in a back alley, even if I ate all my spinach!

08/28/09  7:19pm
Dock Miles says:

Oooh — see a little Basil Gogos homage in there. Nice.

But hey — wasn’t Popeye a bit of an old salt when he first appeared? Must be 120 or 130 by now.

08/28/09  7:35pm

The eye would be redder ;)

08/28/09  7:37pm
Sunday says:

Wouldn’t mind a rendition of Bluto. Might look a little worse for wear, though, what with the incessant beating he was put through.

08/28/09  7:53pm
Galen Fott says:

To call this a “painting” is a bit misleading; it was done with ZBrush.

08/28/09  8:14pm
Ryan says:

Oh dear god! Thats horrible, and yet so….closely accurate, lol

08/28/09  8:16pm

Awesome, I wish could hang that up in my room.

08/28/09  8:27pm
Iain says:

Oh my. *said in a Sulu way*

08/28/09  8:47pm
Rick says:

Jeez, not only is Rick Baker a living legend, he’s also a great painter. That is so cool!

08/28/09  8:57pm
uncle wayne says:

as long as he never stops mumbling adlibs and scatting his own musical score!!

08/28/09  9:03pm
Chris Sobieniak says:

The kind of person I don’t want to meet on a lonely night at the docks!

08/28/09  9:56pm
FP says:

Wasn’t Popeye’s age stated as 40 or 50 years old in those early appearances? That would make him at least 120 years old today. Baker paints him as dang spry for that age.

Is that a painting or a Z-Brush creation? Baker was active on the Z-Brush discussion boards as “Monster Maker” for a while.

08/28/09  10:02pm
Grimmy says:

Isn’t that just Keith Richards in a sailor cap?

08/28/09  10:02pm
victoria says:

Popeye is that way from all those years of smoking

08/28/09  10:05pm
gavin says:

3d, not paint, but still awesome. That link didn’t work for me, but here’s another. The detail is rediculous…
http://www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/tdomf/67929/Popeye.jpg

08/28/09  10:40pm
Mandy says:

Victoria, that was my joke… I think he looks around 120 years old.

08/28/09  11:16pm
Gary says:

Great pic, but like so many before him, Mr Baker got the eyes mixed up. According to E.C. Segar, Popeye lost his right eye in a fight, not the left.
While we’re speaking of The Pop, what’s going one with those Famous Studio restorations. It’s been about a year since Popeye the Sailor Vol 3.

08/29/09  2:09am
Kevin C. says:

Good thing REAL cartoon characters never age.

08/29/09  5:19am
Karl Wilcox says:

What’s with the Dumbo ears? Popeye’s ears are much smaller.
Otherwise, a rather scary (and accurate) image!

08/29/09  5:20am
Karl Wilcox says:

.. I meant to add that, yes, the right eye is the one that should be
closed.

08/29/09  6:58am
Pedro Nakama says:

Actually Popeye was just arrested. His mug shot is here…

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0828093mugs1.html

08/29/09  8:15am

He looks like Freddy Krueger.

08/29/09  11:18am
vince m says:

It’s an interesting painting. But it’s not Popeye. The features are all off. Where’s the cleft chin, the small ears? As an aged Popeye it misses the mark. But as a Popeye-inspired zombie design it’s pretty good.

08/29/09  1:20pm
Dock Miles says:

“What’s with the Dumbo ears?”

Ya ears get bigger and bigger the older you get, son –

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/26/the_odd_body_ears/

08/29/09  2:57pm
Steve says:

I like this face much better: http://img42.imageshack.us/i/popeye.jpg/

08/29/09  4:38pm
Adam says:

In the Fleischer cartoon “Goonland” made in 1938, Popeye claims his father has been lost since the day he was born, which at that point was 40 years prior. This would mean he was born in 1898 which would make him about 111 years old today.

08/29/09  5:38pm
Ron says:

That’s actually not far off from the real guy that popeye was based on- an old man named Frank ‘Rocky’ Feigel who lived in Segar’s home town. Check it out…

http://www.ncs-glc.com/GLC/ed_black/segar/segar1.html

08/29/09  6:24pm
Dock Miles says:

“In the Fleischer cartoon ‘Goonland’ made in 1938, Popeye claims his father has been lost since the day he was born, which at that point was 40 years prior. This would mean he was born in 1898 which would make him about 111 years old today.”

Excellent scholarship, Adam! A larger point is that Popeye, who I think Jules Pfeiffer nominated as the first “superhero,” was no teen titan but an indomitable middle-aged guy. Before youth-fetish set in, one source of power was to be, in the olde time parlance, “weathered.”

08/29/09  10:46pm
Samjoe says:

Regardless, Still a BadAss, he would still kick anybodys ass. Bluto’s included.

08/30/09  1:28am
matt says:

For those commenting on “accuracy”, this Zbrush picture actually started life as a portrait of Baker’s dad. Obviously Rick then had a “waaaaiiitaminute!” moment!

08/30/09  7:43am
JG says:

Brilliant! Got to love these “realismed” cartoons…

Deffinately looks like Zbrush was involved.

08/31/09  6:26am
Andre says:

Wow! That’s wicked (in both senses).

08/31/09  7:56am
Russell H says:

In the 1936 THIMBLE THEATER comic strip story arc titled “Popeye’s Search for his Poppa,” Poopdeck Pappy, on first encountering Popeye, has a thought-balloon containing a picture of an infant Popeye and the date “1894.” So, at least in the Segar comic-strip continuity, Popeye would have been 42 in 1936–coincidentally(?), the same age as Segar himself.

08/31/09  11:12am
joe says:

I knew Popeye and the Seahag were somehow related.

08/31/09  2:58pm
Adam says:

@Russell H
I guess the Fleischer’s didn’t take that into consideration when making “Goonland” in 1938 which Popeye claims his father has been lost since 1898.

08/31/09  5:57pm
EB says:

He looks like Casey Stengel

09/1/09  7:50am
John A says:

Rick got the eye wrong! his right eye’s the squinty one.

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