Popeye

Elzie Crisler Segar (born 1894 in Illinois, died 1938 in California) signed his works with a cigar from which his name curled. After several years of hardship as a young comic artist, he secured a position at the Herald in Chicago through the patronage of Richard Felton Outcault ("Yellow Kid") and drew Charlie Chaplin's Comic Capers there until the series was discontinued in 1917. William Randolph Hearst brought Segar to New York, where he began publishing the daily strip "Thimble Theatre" in the New York Journal in 1919. Ten years later, in January 1929, the quirky sailor Popeye made his debut in this series. Originally a side character, Popeye would soon dominate the series and lead to significant artistic and commercial success, both in comics and in film and television. With his anarchic ideas and the quirky characters he gradually added to Thimble Theatre, he had a major influence on other representatives of the medium. Figures like Carl Barks and André Franquin cited his work as a source of inspiration. Segar passed away at the young age of 43. The comic strip "Popeye" was continued by Bud Sagendorf until... Matthias Wieland, born in 1969, is a freelance editor and translator, moderator, and comic (pre-)reader. After studying in Hildesheim, he worked for Dino Verlag in Stuttgart, then returned to Hanover and became a freelance editor and translator by chance ("Simpsons," "Peanuts," "Calvin and Hobbes," "Moomins," and many more), with occasional forays into the world of stage as a moderator or musician. Matthias Wieland has been hosting a show about music ("It's Just Music") and one about football ("Club of the Red Poets") for some time now - both on h1/Hannover TV. For several years, he has been lending his voice(s) to comic characters in public comic readings with music, for both young and old.