The Sailor Man

Lately I've been slowly going through the recent Popeye The Sailor DVD collection. I don't find these cartoons as flat out funny as the Warner Brother stuff from the same era but they are entertaining. It's interesting to see how the animation and humor evolved over just a few years and I'm really paying attention to the legendary asides Jack Mercer got in when he was doing Popeye's voice. There are plenty of commentaries from all the usual animation experts who also appear on the Warner Brothers sets like Jerry Beck and Leonard Maltin and extras that include a bunch of silent cartoons some of which only have the barest relation to Popeye including the very fist Felix The Cat cartoon. The only thing that I don't like is that there are no musci tracks for the silents. That isn't authentic since silent movies always had some kind of live musical accompaniment and were never shown publicly without it.