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Battling McGnat is a gruff, diminutive boxer and Popeye's boxing coach, who first appeared in a 1925 Thimble Theatre storyline, predating Popeye's own first appearance by several years. Arguably the sole recurring character (beyond several members of the Oyl family) to bridge both the pre-Popeye and Popeye-centric years of Segar's tenure on Thimble Theatre, McGnat eventually returned in the later storyline "Popeye Fights against Tinearo" (1931), and would usually help Popeye in his boxing matches by preparing him and giving him tips during fights. Within his debut storyline, McGnat displayed close-set eyes and an angular, unusually-prominent nose reminiscent of Popeye's earlier designs, indicating McGnat - despite his markedly different personality to that of the sailor - to be among the earliest examples of Segar utilizing an exaggeratedly bizarre character design for a recurring protagonist to comic effect, a trait later integral to Popeye; McGnat's design was resultantly modified on his re-introduction in 1931 to reduce his resemblance to the strip's newfound central character.
Character history[]
Creation and development in Thimble Theatre[]
Battling McGnat was created by E. C. Segar for an untitled 1925 Thimble Theatre comic strip storyline where he played a major role. In a later storyline, he helped Popeye prepare for his match against Tinearo.
Revivals[]
Battling McGnat would re-appear in IDW Publishing's revival of the Popeye comics in 2012. He was featured in the third issue, where he attended the boxing match between J. Wellington Wimpy and the Phantom Crusher, and later on discussed the result of the match with Rough House.
Biography[]
First appearance[]
McGnat in his debut storyline (January 1925)
Castor Oyl had enjoyed some success as the fight manager of Blizzard, a fighting game cock. A fight manager named Duffy approached Castor and offered to sell him management of a human fighter, Battling McGnat, "the flyweight champ of Jersey City". McGnat did several fighting poses in front of Castor, and constantly bragged about "what [he] did to 'Wildcat' O'Conner", which was enough to impress the highly gullible Castor into buying up his management (McGnat would constantly bring up what he did to "Wildcat" O'Conner, without ever going into specifics). Castor was soon able to get Mr. Mint, a naive, young, rich man who knew nothing about boxing, to back McGnat with promotion money. Castor hired Ham Gravy as McGnat's press agent, and a couple of sparring partners: Asphalt, an African-American fellow whose "sparring matches" with McGnat amounted to little more than McGnat hitting Asphalt repeatedly while Asphalt just stood there impervious to it all (and always able to floor McGnat the few times he bothered to hit back); and McSquito, whom McGnat could always easily defeat, yet was inexplicably the only person who could knock down Asphalt. Castor set up a boxing match with a fighter named "Kid" Flynn.
The boxing match between McGnat and Flynn ended up being a fiasco for Castor, Mr. Mint, and McGnat. Flynn easily clobbered McGnat throughout the fight. In one round, McGnat even ran away from the ring with Flynn chasing after him and the entire audience chasing after both fighters to get them back into the ring. In the next round, Flynn floored McGnat and easily won the fight in a knockout. Castor and Mint lost much money from betting on McGnat (Mint's father, however, made a killing betting on Flynn), and what little Castor made from the ticket sales had to go to McGnat's hospital bill.
After being discharged from the hospital, McGnat was terrified when he ran into "Wildcat" O'Conner, who was furious to hear how often McGnat had bragged about beating him, and demanded to set the record straight. While McGnat had defeated O'Conner in a fight, it was only because O'Conner had broken his arm in the first round, and McGnat took advantage of that. Castor suggested the two shake hands to make up, and they did so, with O'Conner breaking McGnat's hand (not by accident, McGnat suspected).
McGnat then declared he had fallen in love with Olive Oyl. After making one too many romantic overtures to her, Olive just slapped him silly.
Castor would find greater success in the next storyline as fighting manager to a large, inhumanly strong man named Hogan. There are a handful of strips in this storyline featuring McGnat, showing him resentful at Castor for having cast him aside for Hogan, being terrified of Hogan's appearance, and finally being hired to be Hogan's sparring partner, only to pose over Hogan taking a nap in front of Castor as if McGnat had knocked him out (none of this would have much bearing on the plot).
McGnat made a further appearance in the same year, in what was not so much a story as a gag-a-day stretched over a few days, about Castor trying and failing to be a humorist. In one strip, Castor told McGnat a joke he had just thought up, only for McGnat to feel so sorry for the person described in Castor's "joke" that he burst into tears.
The Popeye vs. Tinearo fight[]
In a 1931 storyline, Olive Oyl was so worried about Popeye's upcoming boxing match with Tinearo that she placed an ad for someone to be Popeye's trainer. Battling McGnat showed up at her place, taking the job. Olive asked him if he knew anything about fighting, which led to McGnat bragging about the time he beat T. N. T. Smith. Popeye was amused by his "dis" and "dat" accent (one of the few speech impediments Popeye did not have) commenting that McGnat was okay, except, "he ain't no good on langwitch...he's igmorant!"
Later, when Popeye, Olive, and McGnat witnessed Tinearo knocking out bulls for exercise, McGnat tried to urge Popeye to start training. Popeye instead consoled Olive, telling her that Tinearo was likely to kill him in the ring, making this one of the last times she could be with him. This made Olive all the more tearful and affectionate. After he finished this kind of courting, Popeye confided in McGnat that it was just a play for sympathy, and that he dismissed Tinearo as "the most cheese I ever did see."
McGnat urged Popeye to combat all the positive publicity Tinearo was getting for knocking out bulls by doing the same. Unlike Tinearo and his backers, they could not afford to buy a bull, so they decided to find one in a pasture and punch it in front of a newspaper photographer McGnat had arranged to take a picture of the moment. McGnat selected what he thought was a bull (because they all looked alike to him) and had Popeye punch it while being photographed. The photographer promised there would be an eight-column article about it in the paper, but when the newspaper arrived, it turned out that the article was lampooning Popeye for punching a poor, defenseless milk cow.
To mock Popeye and ruin his morale, Tinearo's backers, Castor Oyl and Mr. Kilph, sent Popeye a bouquet of flowers, which Popeye received in McGnat's presence. The trainer was so angered he came into Tinearo's gym and punched him. Tinearo punched back, and his one blow sent McGnat flying out of the gym and into a tree. When he recovered, McGnat returned to Popeye, hoping to console him, only to find Popeye had given the bouquet to Olive, claiming he bought them for her.
Mr. Kilph kept sending Popeye bouquets every day for a week, and every day Popeye would give them to Olive. McGnat tried to point out to Popeye the bouquets were an insult, implying they would be used for Popeye's funeral after the fight, but Popeye refused to believe him. Instead, he got offended when he stopped getting bouquets and went up to Tinearo to demand why he had stopped.
The day of the big fight, McGnat was in despair because Popeye had ignored all his advice and done no training. He even ignored McGnat's advice not to eat anything before the fight and had six hot dogs, with buns, just before the match. But Popeye largely trounced Tinearo in the match, knocking him down in both of the first two rounds, only for Tinearo to be saved by the bell both times. Popeye decisively knocked out Tinearo before the end of the third round.
McGnat was still Popeye's trainer when Kilph arranged Popeye's next match, against a gorilla, but thought Popeye had zero chances and just advised him to lay down as soon as possible. Still, Popeye won again.
Trivia[]
- Battling McGnat made his pre-Popeye debut in the dailies, where he and Olive Oyl met. When he returned six years later in the Sunday strips, Olive asked him if he knew anything about fighting, as if she had never heard of him. This seems to indicate, much like the two separate accounts of the end of Castor's marriage to Cylinda - one for the dailies, one for the Sunday strips - that the dailies and Sundays of Thimble Theatre at the time were two separate continuities. It is unlikely Olive would be willing to keep McGnat as Popeye's trainer, given McGnat's poor performance as a boxer in the dailies, if the dailies and Sundays were all in the same continuity. Nonetheless, the near-complete lack of allusions to pre-Popeye events or storylines within either continuity after 1930 (during which Olive never alludes to either her former relationship with Ham Gravy or the events of such strips) may indicate that Olive's failure to recognize McGnat is simply a retcon.
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