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Popeye the Sailor is a famous comic strip character, later featured in popular animated cartoons. He was created by Elzie Crisler Segar and first appeared in the King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929.

Popeye is an independent sailor with a unique way of speaking, muscular forearms with two (sometimes one) anchors tattooed on them, and an ever-present corncob pipe. His strange, humorous, and often supernatural adventures take him all over the world, and place him in conflict with enemies such as the Sea Hag and King Blozo of Brutopia.

The plot lines in the animated cartoons tended to be simpler. A villain, usually Bluto (later renamed Brutus for a time), makes a move on Popeye's "sweetie", Olive Oyl. The bad guy then clobbers Popeye until Popeye eats spinach, which gives him superhuman strength. (The "spinach factor" is only in the cartoons; in the comic strip, Popeye is just naturally tough.) Spinach farmers in Crystal City, Texas were so grateful for this they erected a statue of Popeye in the town and credited him for saving the then-dying spinach industry.

Although Popeye is short, odd-looking, belligerent, and has only one eye, many consider him a precursor to the superheroes who would eventually come to dominate the world of comic books. Some observers of popular culture point out that the fundamental character of Popeye, paralleling that of another 1930s icon, Superman, is very close to the traditional view of how America sees itself as a nation: possessing uncompromising moral standards and resorting to force when threatened, or when he "can't stands no more" bad behavior from an antagonist. This theory is directly reinforced in certain cartoons, when Popeye defeats his foe while an American patriotic song such as "The Stars and Stripes Forever" plays on the soundtrack. Popeye also expresses American individualism. "I yam what I yam, and that's all I yam."

Popeye was inspired from Frank "Rocky" Fiegle, a man who was handy with his fists during Segar's youth in Chester, Illinois. It was said Segar sent Fiegle checks in the 1930s. Fiegle died in 1948 at age 79.

Popeye first appeared on January 17, 1929 as a minor character in Segar's newspaper cartoon strip Thimble Theatre, which had been running since 1919 with protagonists Olive Oyl, her brother Castor Oyl, and her boyfriend, Ham Gravy. The Popeye character became so popular that he was given a larger role. Olive eventually left Ham Gravy to become Popeye's girlfriend, although she often displayed a fickle attitude towards the sailor. Castor Oyl continued to come up with get-rich-quick schemes, and enlisted Popeye in the misadventures.

In 1933, Popeye received a foundling baby in the mail, whom he adopted and named "Swee'Pea". Other regular characters in the strip were J. Wellington Wimpy, a moocher and hamburger lover who would "gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today"; George W. Geezil, a local cobbler who speaks in a heavily affected accent and habitually attempted to murder or wish death upon Wimpy; Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye's belligerent and woman-hating father; and Eugene the Jeep, a yellow dog from Africa with magical powers.

Segar's strip was quite different from the cartoons that followed. The stories were more complex, with many characters who never appeared in the cartoons (King Blozo for example). Spinach-usage was rare and Bluto made only one appearance. The original newspaper strips were collected and published in multiple volumes by Fantagraphics.

Wimpy's name was later borrowed for the Wimpy restaurant chain, one of the first international fast food restaurants featuring hamburgers, which they call "Wimpy Burgers."

The strip is also responsible for popularising, although not inventing, the word 'goon' (meaning a thug or lackey); goons in Popeye's world were large humanoids with indistinctly drawn faces that were particularly known for being used as muscle and slave labor by Popeye's nemesis the Sea Hag. One particular goon, a female named Alice, was an occasional recurring character in the animated shorts.

After Segar's death in 1938, many different artists were hired to draw the strip, the most notable being Bud Sagendorf beginning in 1958. He wrote and drew the daily strip until 1986 and the Sunday strip until his death in 1994. Sagendorf, who had been Segar's assistant, made a definite effort to retain much of the classic style, although his art is instantly discernable. Many obscure characters from the Segar years were maintained, especially O.G.Wotasnozzle and King Blozo. Sagendorf's new characters, such as the Thung, had a very Segar-like quality. What set Sagendorf apart from Segar more than anything else was his sense of pacing. Where plotlines moved very quickly with Segar, it would sometimes take an entire week of Sagendorf's daily strips for the plot to be advanced even a small amount.

George Wildman drew Popeye for Charlton Comics from 1969 till the late 1970s. From 1986 to 1992, the daily strip was written and drawn by Bobby London, who after some controversy was fired from the strip for a story that could be taken to satirize abortion. Since then the daily strip has been reprints of older Sagendorf strips, and the Sunday strip was taken over by Hy Eisman in 1994. Acknowledging Popeye's growing popularity, the strip was billed as Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye during the 1960s and 1970s, and eventually was titled simply Popeye.