Elzie Segar, the creator of the comic, happen to know a guy in Illinois named Frank “Rocky" Fiegel who inspired the character Popeye. Frank Fiegel was born January 27, 1868 in Poland. He was a retired sailor contracted by Wiebusch pub in the city of Chester, Illinois, to tidy and maintain order in the pub. He had a track record to be constantly associated with bouncing not wanted patrons out of the bar. So believe it or not he actually had a deformed left eye and he had some pretty good fighting skills. The man became a local legend. He constantly smoked his pipe all the time, so he spoke only with one side of his mouth, like the character Popeye we knew as kids; and he was toothless, Fiegel did not use spinach to get stronger but was more of a drinker, and instead of a sailor he was in fact a bartender. TOO ! TOO! Oh....by the way- they also raised a statue of Frank in his hometown.....
Elzie Segar the creator was born December 8th 1894 Chester IL and died October 13 1938 Santa Monica CA. As a young guy Segar worked as a house painter, sign painter, and motion-picture projectionist. After having many of his cartoons declined, he took a correspondence course in cartooning.He strove on a correspondence course in cartooning from W.L. Evans, of Cleveland, Ohio, in which he had invested $20. He said that after work he "" lit up the oil lights about midnight and dealt with the course up until 3 a.m."" Segar transferred to Chicago where he met Richard Felton Outcault.Outcault encouraged him and presented him at the Chicago Herald. On March 12, 1916, the Herald published Segar'' s initially comic, Charlie Chaplin'' sFunny Capers, which ran for a little over a year. In 1918, he proceeded to Hearst'' s Chicago Evening American where he created Looping the Loop. Segar wed Myrtle Johnson the very same year; they had two kids. He took his household and moved to New York and started working for King Features Syndicate.He began by drawing Thimble Theatre for the New York Journal. The strip made its launching on December 19, 1919, and featured the characters Olive Oyl, Castor Oyl, and Ham and Gravy, who were the comic'' s leads for about a decade. In January of 1929, when Castor Oyl needed a mariner to navigate his ship to Dice Island, Castor chose up an old salt down by the docks called Popeye. The Popeye character "" took the program"" and ended up being the irreversible highlighted character.The rest is history!