Evening American managing editor William Curley thought Segar could succeed in New York, so he sent him to
King Features Syndicate, where Segar worked for many years. King Features asked Segar to create a comic strip to replace
Midget Movies by
Ed Wheelan, who had recently resigned from the syndicate. Segar created
Thimble Theatre for the
New York Journal, as the replacement for Wheelan's strip. The
Thimble Theatre strip made its debut on December 19, 1919, featuring the characters
Olive Oyl,
Castor Oyl and Harold Hamgravy, whose name was quickly shortened in the strip to simply "
Ham Gravy". They were the strip's leads for about a decade. In one storyline, the characters encountered a superhuman "tough guy" named Harry Hardegg, who was able to break a moving buzz saw with his head. Comics historian
Bill Blackbeard has described Harry Hardegg as a "prototype" for Popeye. On January 17, 1929, when Castor Oyl needed a
mariner to navigate his ship to Dice Island, Castor picked up a weatherbeaten sailor named Popeye in the docks. Popeye's first line in the strip, upon being asked if he was a sailor, was "'Ja think I'm a cowboy?" It is believed Segar remembered a tough laborer named Frank "Rocky" Fiegel who was always getting in fights but also gave out candy and treats to children, including a young Segar. At first Segar intended Popeye to be a once-off character, but after large numbers of newspaper readers wrote in requesting the character's return, Segar reintroduced Popeye as a full-time regular in August 1929, eventually enabling the sailor to become the focal point of the strip. Segar initially depicted Popeye as a quarrelling antihero. Segar's storylines for the Popeye-focused
Thimble Theatre drew on several fictional genres, including
Westerns, pirate
swashbucklers,
Sports stories, and
fantasy stories. Some of the other notable characters Segar created include
J. Wellington Wimpy and
Eugene the Jeep. In 1929, Segar and his friend, screenwriter
Norton S. Parker, began work on
The Sea Hag, a prose novel for adults that would have featured both Popeye and the villainess the
Sea Hag. However, King Features refused to grant Segar and Parker permission to publish the novel.
The Sea Hag has never been put into print. In 1934, King Features (noting the increasing popularity of the Popeye character with children) ordered Segar to tone down Popeye's swearing and brawling. Although irritated by the order, Segar complied, and made Popeye more of a straightforward hero, more ubiquitously emphasizing his already-established affinity for aiding children and animals rather than his more violent and irascible tendencies, which persisted in a somewhat reduced form. Segar continued to produce
Thimble Theatre, published in five hundred newspapers globally by 1938, until his death. Beginning in 1933, Popeye was adapted into a series of
cartoons by the
Fleischer Studios, which increased the character's already-ascendant popularity even further. Popeye was also licensed by King Features for hundreds of toys, games and other products. The commercial success of these products ensured King Features paid Segar highly for his work; by 1938, the syndicate was giving Segar a salary of $100,000 a year. ==Later life and death==