Crowds are the stock in trade in this lovely batch, the fighting panel of August 28th, foreshadowing 1936’s Brotherly Love. It’s a sure sign of classic Popeye art when little care is made with the placement of his pipe—in that panel, it appears to be coming out of his ear.
July – August 1935
(click images below to enlarge)
07-03-1935
07-10-1935
07-17-1935
07-24-1935
07-31-1935
08-07-1935
08-14-1935
08-21-1935
08-28-1935
Above and Below, a sample of what the Paramount salesmen were selling to the theaters at the time these promotional pieces above appeared in print. Above: Betty Boop and Grampy (released August 16th, 1935)
Below: You Gotta Be A Football Hero (released August 30th, 1935)
THAD KOMOROWSKI is a writer, journalist, film restorationist and author of the acclaimed (and recently revised) Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. He blogs at 
Grampy was great – the Fleischers came up with some funny stuff for this character!
I like Grampy — one short at a time. His cartoons are too similar for me to watch as a group.
That Popeye cartoon is slightly disturbing in that after Popeye’s team gets stomped by the Bluto team that last time, the players never move again. They just… lie there. Motionless. Popeye then takes over as a one-man team but what about the other players, which are never seen after that? They aren’t dead, are they? There was another, similar cartoon with a baseball team that took it even further. The weaklings’ team (I want to say the “wimpy” team, but Popeye cartoons are one instance where you have to be precise in what you call “wimpy”) is literally stomped into the ground by the Bluto team. As in lying face down half-buried in the dirt. And they stay there for the rest of the cartoon, never moving (I think they’re drawn into the background art). Even as a kid I was a little creeped out, since they all seemed kind of dead…