Did Popeye talk like that in the comics, or something? Or is this guy just unfamiliar with him?

I think it’s pretty funny that he would use /Popeye/ of all characters as a representative of the modern animation industry. Like, actually humorous funny. The big ol’ cliche would have been the mouse or the rabbit.

The storyline is about the NEWSPAPER COMICS industry. Nothing to do with animation.

It looks to me like it’s referring to those 73 employees at AIG who had those multi-million-dollar bonus contracts.

The comic was just switching Bailout$/Edward Liddy for spinach/popeye.

Other than that switch, there really doesn’t appear like much else going on here.

The theme is asking for a bailout for newspaper comic characters. Strangely enough, “Pearls Before Swine” had the same theme with nearly the same gags as Candorville on Monday and Tuesday, and one of Pastis’s characters even showing up in Bell’s strip- I wonder if they collaborated.