bj040207

Well, blow me down! Who knew that, decades before Segar’s transcendently wonderful Popeye made his first appearance, there was another sailor who navigated the funny papers with a similar penchant for broken English and fisticuffs? Binnacle Jim set sail in early 1904, and though today’s catch only runs until the middle of 1905, the strip kept chugging for a couple more years. I love the “captioned illustration” school of comics as much as I do the traditional word balloon type, and Binnacle Jim employs both methods to wonderful effect, with Jim’s take on affairs running across the bottom while the action unfolds above, with terrific color commentary provided by a monkey and parrot duo. I won’t dare make the claim that Binnacle Jim approaches Thimble Theater’s greatness in any fashion (save for the, um, fashion), but it’s a fun strip all the same.