Birthday of visually impaired sailorman (that's Popeye to you); Time traveller looking back.

Byline: Dan O'Neill

HE ambled into our lives 80 years ago this week, the first of a legion of comic strip superheroes.

Among other miracles he persuaded the world's kids to eat their greens, and he also introduced three new words to the language, one of them pinched by Harry Secombe and his mates, another by the US Army.

And he made his entrance in the mighty Hearst newspaper chain on January 17, 1929, in a comic strip drawn by a genius named E C Segar.

You'll recognise him, of course, by the corncob pipe poking like a periscope above the enormous jutting jaw, by the anchor tattoos on skittle-shaped forearms, by the cap and bell bottoms and the one eye that gave him his name - no political correctness then.

Today, he'd be called Visually Impaired the Sailorman. Instead of - yes, Popeye.

To repeat, he was the first superhero.

Forget Hercules and Samson, Achilles and Tarzan. We're talking comic strips here and Superman didn't turn up until 1937 to start the pants-over-tights school of super heroes.

Segar was producing a daily column of comment and cartoons for a long-defunct Chicago paper owned by William Randolph Hearst, and when that tycoon heard of its popularity he whisked its 25-year-old creator off to New York.

There, Segar featured Castor Oyl and his not-yet-famous sister Olive in a strip called Thimble Theatre.

Enter Popeye, recruited as the entire crew of the boat taking Castor to Dice Island, a "gambling hell", where he uses his magical whiffle hen to clean up.

Popeye is shot by Dice Island's owners, then, after being revived by the whiffle hen, becomes possessed of his familiar superhuman strength - he wipes out the villains by spitting the 15 bullets fired into him at them.

So it wasn't spinach wot did it. That came later in Max Fleischer's screen cartoons.

Hearst syndicated his new hero and within two years Popeye was in almost every American newspaper, his dark, gothic adventures a long way from the familiar sanitised screen version.

His most formidable enemy in those early days wasn't Bluto, the black-bearded colossus, but the Sea Hag, an eerie, menacing witch-like shape draped in black, possessed of sinister magical powers, pet vulture perched on bony shoulder, the true stuff of nightmares. Popeye would battle the Sea Hag all down the years.

The greatest of all supporting acts mooched into the Sunday supplement strip in 1931, a dreamy, poetry-spouting hamburger-munching scrounger with the imposing name J Wellington Wimpy (your first word).

And so they stepped into Popeye's life, Castor soon disposed of, Olive Oyl staying to share star billing.

Out ofawooden crate pops an infant given the name Sweepea, soon to be "an adoptic infink son".

Yes, Popeye mangled the language more than Mrs Malaprop, often disgustipated by Wimpy, having no symphity for monskers or ghosts - and he met plenty.

In 1933, Alice the Goon arrived from the moon (Spike Milligan pinched that one), a hideous apparition, black-eyed, bald and big nosed with huge tufts of fur around wrists and waist, a character, you could say, out of the Goon Show.

At first she disgustipated Popeye but he was soon won over.

So the strip became more and more surreal, especially when Eugene the Jeep (your thirdword) dropped out of the fourth dimension, living on a diet of orchids, a wish-granter who looked like a small spotted dog.

There was Toar, the biggest man in the world, a prehistoric giant almost as strong as Popeye. And last to stray into the strip, Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye's long-lost father, so long away at sea he was covered in barnacles.

Segar died in 1938 and no other artist could imitate the Wonderland whackiness, the surreal story lines. So the newspaper strip faded, Max Fleischer's screen Popeye taking over, giving us maybe our most familiar version.

In a way it was like having Edgar Allen Poe rewritten by Enid Blyton.

Popeye came to Britain in April, 1937 in Jolly Comic but lasted only until October.

That year he joined the Daily Mirror and stayed until the Fifties alongside that other superman, Garth.

But besides the screen cartoons he starred in dozens of different comic books and spawned a huge spin off industry.

You could get spinach-coloured soap, Popeye watches and clocks, clockwork Popeye cars and boats and planes, Popeye key rings, jigsaw puzzles and sweets. And, naturally, Popeye brand spinach.

There was Olive Oyl-shaped soap and candles and at the peak of Popeye mania Milton Black, a Pittsburgh man, was paid EUR250 a week (a huge sum during the Depression) as a Popeye double and possible film sailorman.

Finally, Robin Williams starred as Popeye in a 1980 movie, proving only that the sailorman should have stayed in the newspaper strip.

Where it all began 80 years ago.