Popeye The Sailor Man Now Getting…Manga Adaptation?!

We saw Popeye the Sailor Man start his adventures in comic strip form all the way back in 1929. Then he got famous enough to get his own cartoon series in 1933. His fame even grew to net him a live-action film adaptation back in 1980, with Robin Williams playing him to boot. Now it seems though, that the spinach-munching sailor is moving on to a medium we never expected him to get into manga. Well, he does say he “yam what [he] yam”. And what he is apparently is a Shonen Jump hero now.

Popeye the Shonen Man?!

King Features Syndicate is proud to announce Eye Lie Popeye by Marcus Williams. This will be a new webcomic starring the titular world-famous Popeye the Sailor Man. As you can see above, the art style has definite manga influences in it. The only difference is that it reads from left to right instead of the usual right to left for manga, but it’s a small thing here. The author himself, Marcus Williams, actually goes into greater detail about this manga, which you can read below:

As a huge fan of both Popeye and manga, I’m looking forward to combining both passions and bringing fans an all new format and style to experience the iconic character’s adventures. I’m thrilled that my Popeye Goku art led me here and am excited to infuse the traditional shonen style with a modern twist and explore the mystery behind Popeye’s missing eye.

Yes, you read that right. Marcus Williams is indeed the artist behind the now memetic “Goku and Popeye” art. You can in fact check out his original artwork from DeviantArt below:

So it’s no wonder Marcus Williams would draw a Popeye the Sailor Man manga as soon as possible. In fact, maybe Eye Lie Popeye might eventually get famous enough to get an official anime/comic crossover with Dragonball. Well, the only way to see if when we finally get to read this webcomic.

Fortunately, that won’t take long. You can read Eye Lie Popeye on its official website. The webcomic will debut its story over a period of 5 weeks, at a rate of a page per day. Unfortunately, each page will only be up for a day before the next page replaced it, and you can’t access previous pages. So if you want to read this Popeye the Sailor Man manga, then you might want to stay on top of each release every day.

Eye Lie Popeye: Preview Pages

That’s not all, folks. Eye Lie Popeye has a pair of preview pages ready for us as teasers, all thanks to Comic Book. You can check them out above and below:

Source: DeviantArt, eyelie.popeye.com, Comic Book