Category: Cartooning

My first favorite cartoon character was Popeye. I never cared for spinach as a kid, canned or otherwise, but that didn’t stop me from loving the Fleischer Popeye cartoons.

I was in an ice cream-candy shop with Carol and Eric this weekend, and I spotted boxes of Popeye ‘candy sticks’. They’re what used to be called candy cigarettes.

These ‘candy sticks’ look like reefer joints! What if those aren’t spinach leaves in that can, but marijuana? Maybe that explains why Popeye is senselessly punching his own shadow on the back of the box. He’s stoned!

But look closely on the side of the box, made by World Confections, Inc., of Brooklyn, NY, and you’ll see writing in Arabic!

Have Islamic extremists put Popeye under their influence? Is he in fact a drugged sleeper agent? Why hasn’t Glenn Beck said anything about this?

Back in February, I pointed out a controversy caused by a political cartoon from December, by Mark Fiore, who has won the Pulitzer Prize. And he’s the first to do it with animated cartoons.

But before this good news, it turns out that December was a doubly troublesome month for Fiore, because that was when his iPhone app was rejected by Apple Computer. Why? Because it “ridicules public figures.”

Follow-up: Fiore submitted his app again, and this time it was accepted, but the decision had to come from Steve Jobs.