Popeye and the Hillbilly Woman by Mark Newman The Popeye cartoon "Hillbilling and Cooing" had Popeye taken by an amazonian hillbilly girl as her "may-an" leaving Olive to rescue him. You can see the original on You Tube. In the original ending, Olive gets the spinach instead of Popeye. With the aid of that magical green elixir, Olive gets lemon-sized biceps to add to her skinny body. With power far beyond their pitiful size, she rescues the hapless, spinach-free Popeye from the exceedingly powerful hillbilly girl and punches her all the way to the heavens, where that incredible backwoods woman, seemingly caught beyond rescue on the points of a star, harnesses its power to propel herself across the skies in pursuit of the man in the moon. It inspired me this morning to write my own version. But although I'll track the original as much as I can, that's not my idea of how it would go. We start with Popeye and Olive on a drive in the country in Popeye's topless, old jalopy, where they are spotted through a spyglass by a hillbilly woman (let's call her Ella Mae) playing an improvised banjo, singing about how she much needs a man. Ella Mae takes a fancy to Popeye and sets off to catch her man. This is no ordinary backwoodswoman. She's over six and a half feet tall, with shoulders over 3 feet wide, a 50" chest (not all of which is muscle) and although they lack visible muscle mounds, her arms are far thicker than Popeye's disproportionately developed forearms and her strength is astounding. She shoots a hole in the rear tire to stop the car, snatches Popeye out of the seat and carries him away in her arms as though he's a helpless baby. Is he helpless because he cannot even begin to fight off her enormous (evenun -enhanced by spinach) strength or because her total dominance of him through her amazonian physique is the answer to his lifelong dreams? We don't know. We can't read his mind, either through a thought bubble or a glimpse of the likely sudden arousal of his member, hidden from our view. But my guess is that he is overcome by the overwhelming physicality of her body, the intensity of her need for him, and the sensation of her exuberantly sensual female flesh pressed against him. She has turned his body to hers so that his erection, sudden and unstoppable, is pressed hard against the lower reaches of her fantastic, unrestrained bosom, caught between its plush, luxuriant softness and the ridges of her rock-hard abdominal muscles, which cannot help erupting through the soft, feminine tissue of her torso, pressing and rubbing against Popeye's erection with each tiny movement of her body and put Popeye in a state of ever increasing lust for her, while confirming to her that she has at last found her true, lifelong mate. But there is Olive to deal with. She notices her man is missing and hops out of the car to retrieve him. She gets up close to the new lovebirds but when Olive tries to stop her, she is immediately repelled by a massively powerful slap that sends her flying through the air and through the rock-face of a nearby cliff, where only the outline of Olive's pathetically skinny frame is visible. She is lost to our view, many feet inside the rock. The sheer power of that single slap, without the benefit of even a single leaf of spinach (one might suppose that she hasn't eaten a single green vegetable in her life!) is nearly as amazing as the bridge feat. This Ella Mae hillbilly woman must be the most powerful character ever in the history of Popeye! Olive recovers, climbs out of the cliff and temporarily gets Ella Mae to surrender Popeye by pulling on and stretching Ella Mae's elastic gun holder and snapping it, shooting her some distance away (an improbable result, given the evident difference between Olive's and Ella Mae's body masses). Olive then drives off with Popeye again, heedless of the flat tire. Popeye and Olive reach a covered bridge and drive through, but Ella Mae has caught up and in another amazing pre-spinach feet, lifts the entire bridge off its foundations on both sides of the river, spins it around so that Olive drives right back to her and then again takes possession of Popeye. Not one to dwell over her effortless triumph over her far inferior rival for Popeye's already evident affection, she carries her prize to a waiting rowboat, pushes his arms through the bottom to secure him from any second thoughts, and begins rowing across the water while singing of a romantic hour on the water kissing her man. It must be terribly uncomfortable for Popeye, with his arms wedged into the bottom of the boat. But still, after an intial struggle he makes no further effort to pry his arms out. He sits passively, lost in lust, watching his hillbilly paramour row him rapidly through the water, listening to her serenade. But Olive is in pursuit and amazingly she catches up, her thin body paddling on a log, shooting through the water like an arrow to its target. Olive topples Ella Mae from the boat and begins paddling the two of them back to safety, disdainfully using Ella Mae's banjo as a paddle. Popeye, still passive, heartbroken perhaps from the loss of his new object of affection, remains stuck in the boat. He says nothing and does nothing to help speed their rescue. Olive's efforts are in vain. Ella Mae swims underneath the rowboat and, counteracting Olive's efforts, lifts the boat above the water and now moves at triple her original pace, her legs kicking a wake more powerful than an outboard motor. Again, the power of her arms and legs un-enhanced by spinach is simply incredible, lifting a boat weighing more than 500 pounds above the water, treading water to keep herself sufficiently above it so that she can breath, and using a kick strong enough to move herself and the boat at speed through the current. Reaching the shore, she carries Popeye away in the boat until suddenly, only when she declares they will be married, he finds the strength to free himself and jump all the way to the top of a tree. Perhaps the realization that he would be forever tied to this innately, superior woman of power frightens Popeye. Perhaps this is why he has always remained with Olive, whose weak, sexless body is no threat to an inarticulate man with poor job prospects and a strange shape, someone who is a complete failure in human interaction, who is constantly bullied and never learns to avoid a fight, who temporarily gains confidence, power and skill only after eating a commonly available green leafy vegetable. Olive never questions him, never doubts him, but nor does she spur him on to any real accomplishment. Like him, perhaps she is content with a loser, fearful that a more capable, confident man would leave her for a more attractive woman. The two of them, Popeye and Olive, inevitably revert to each other, secure in each others' inadequacies. So, now, freed from the prison of the bottom of the boat, he lands a top a tall tree, high above the powerfully alluring Ella Mae. He cannot, he dare not confront her directly. Is it because she is too powerful? Or because he is still too powerfully attracted to her and cannot trust himself to approach her? And so he clings to the tree, a symbol of his rampant desire for her, holding it himself, keeping himself separate from the object of his desire and his fear, demonstrating to her and to all his fear of consummating his all consuming desire. But if his fear and indecision disappoints her, she gives no sign of it. In fact, it appears that it makes her only more determined to take control of him. With another demonstration of her matchless power and resolve, she produces an axe and, swinging one way with the blade, slices through the tree trunk at ankle and shoulder level with single chops, and then swinging back with the flat side of the blade, knocks the chunk of trunk far out of view, then repeats the action, cutting down the precious symbol of his masculinity, the instrument of his independence, steadily bringing her man down to her, staking her claim to him. She has chosen him and so he WILL be her man. Meanwhile in contrast to the internally conflicted Popeye, Olive confronts her rival. Again, she is no threat at all. Ella Mae lifts her by her stringy black hair and with one pull sends her rotating furiously like a top and deposits Olive on a tree stump where the spinning Olive drills deep into it, ending up rooted into the ground up to her long neck, trapped more even firmly and finally than Popeye was in the boat. Is it Olive's impending doom that spurs Popeye finally to turn to his spinach? Is it a desire to rescue her? Or is it that with each blow Ella Mae is making the tree smaller and smaller, bringing him ever closer to her, ever closer to the consummation of their union, with him as the lesser, the weaker, the smaller, the one possessed by her in every sense of the word? It is only spinach that can restore the natural order, that can make him strong enough to resist her, and in doing so resist the fate he desires. He withdraws the can of spinach from the breast of his sailor suit, but as he does Ella Mae changes her strategy. The tree is now small enough for her to hold and shake. She can strip him from his pole without destroying it. After just two shakes of the tree, Popeye is still holding out, on top, but the spinach can is dislodged from his grasp. It falls, knocking from branch to branch, nearing Olive, until a collision with the final branch above Olive spins the can wildly, the spinach spilling out into an arc, flying into the open mouth of ... Ella Mae. "Oi oi," Popeye says, looking down at her from the top of the shrunken tree. "Eeeee eeeeeee!" Olive cries, her eyes bugging out. A lump forms in her throat, which she tries to swallow although the lump bounces off the tree stump where the bottom of her neck is caught and clangs back up against her head. Always hungry, keen to eat anything, absolutely anything that can feed her ferocious appetite, drawing nourishment from any organic matter within sight -- whether her native diet of twinkies, pepperoni pizza, sausages, pepsi, scrapple, spam, pork rinds, Frosties, cinnamon rolls, doughnuts, Whoppers, fries (large), chili dogs, baked beans, Budweiser, pancakes with syrup or grilled cheese sandwiches, all of which (improbably, but nevertheless) are quickly transformed by her awesome genetic gifts into solid bone, dense muscle, height, girth, energy, drive, desire, speed and will -- she eagerly sucks the spinach from the air, drawing it down into her gut with a single gulp. Popeye's tune sounds, played in the sound of Ella Mae's banjo, as the dose of spinach takes its course. In a flash, Ella Mae's chest expands, her breasts spring forward, high, round, firm, out-sized and separately visible for the very first time in her life, her waist pulls in (she never knew she had one!), her hips flare out, her shoulders bulge round as large as bowling balls, her biceps, already thick but undefined, emerge from the mass of her arm, becoming larger and harder with each kettledrum beat of her great heart. With evident delight she raises both arms, lifts the tree higher over her head, closes her fists and pumps her muscles. They flex even larger, bursting through the short sleeves of her simple, home-sewn dress. The eyes of both Olive and Popeye goggle to look at them, expecting the usual moving picture of missiles, rockets, tanks or explosions on the skin of her biceps. Instead there is only a picture of Ella Mae with Popeye held tightly in her arms, his head nestled between her firm, prodigious breasts, a Popeye who with each passing second looks smaller and smaller, while Ella Mae's chest and arms grow larger and larger until Popeye's whole body fits securely within Ella Mae's bosom, while she hugs him to her. He is encased in her breast prison, never to escape. "Whoa!" Popeye says. "Aaaiiii Aaaiiii!" Olive keens. "I need a man, a man, a man, a ma-a-a-a-an!" Ella Mae sings loudly, richly, operatically and full of feeling as she looks up at Popeye at the top of the tree. Her voice makes the ground rumble, and it splits the tree stump holding Olive. She climbs out and, trembling slightly, slips a can of spinach from the sleeve of her dress and quickly downs it. She raises her skinny arms and lemon-sized muscles appear to the triumphant sounds of Popeye's tune, played by a flute in a slightly higher key. "Give me back my man!" she yells as she runs up to Ella Mae fires a punch up at her taut stomach. There is an explosion of sound and light as spinach-fueled fist meets spinach-reinforced abdominals. Ella Mae stands unmoved, unharmed and unamused. A picture of a handgun firing a bullet at a massive stone door appears on Ella Mae's stomach, the bullet bouncing away without any effect. Ella Mae looks down at Olive with contempt. She plunges the tree she is holding several feet into the ground like a stake, and with her thumb and forefinger takes Olive's right biceps and squeezes it back down into her arm to a descending three note sound of the flute then does the same with the left, as a picture of a flattened can of spinach appears on Olive's thin arms. She stands menacingly over Olive, her chest thrust out proudly, each thick arm twice the girth of skinny Olive's body. "Oh!" squeals Olive. She tries to flex the muscle back into existence but fails completely. Nevertheless, she fires another punch at Ella Mae. This time when Olive's arm makes contact with Ella Mae it contracts like an accordion, while a picture appears on Ella Mae's stomach of a pop gun firing a cork at an even more massive stone wall. The cork hits the wall, bounces off and then, sprouting tiny legs, runs away. Ella Mae breathes in deeply, making her chest expand hugely. She exhales and blows Olive high into the air, soaring like a rocket until she lands on a five pointed star where she looks down at Popeye, helplessly, while Ella Mae begins driving the tree further and further into the ground. In seconds he will be Ella Mae's, and there is nothing Olive can do to stop her. "Arrgh!" Popeye exclaims. He removes his reserve can of spinach. He downs it quickly and as he hits the ground the triumphant trumpeted tune sounds in the usual key. A wave of energy runs through Popeye, enlarging his chest, his arms and his legs as it passes, although not nearly to the size of Ella Mae's. As he reaches back to punch Ella Mae into next week, he declares, "I don't likes to hit a goil, but I gots no choice!" "Ooooh, what a MAN," she exclaims, "and he's MINE!" Before he can deliver the blow she lifts him up and locks his lips in a long, intensely erotic kiss. Her thick arms encircle his body. Her massive breasts massage his chest and surround it. Her leg pushes his crotch tight to hers, and her muscle-filled butt contracts rhythmically as she grinds against him, pulsing in a jungle beat. She tastes him and knows instantly, instinctively, that he is the one for her. She wants more and feeds off his juices, taking as much of him into her as she can. In the background the banjo-strummed Popeye's tune plays in harmony with the trumpets, the banjo becoming louder and more insistent as the trumpets shift to a minor key. She puts him down and he can hardly stand, overcome by her rampant sensuality. The wave of spinach energy within him reverses, inward from his hands through his arms and shoulders and chest, upwards from his feet through his legs, his enhanced muscles shrinking back to their normal size and even smaller, while the energy gathers force elsewhere. His sailor suit bulges largely in the crotch and an enormous, spinach-fueled erection bursts through the fabric, waving its head at Ella Mae, the trumpeted tune taking on the jungle beat. "Ga-ga-ga-ghee!" he exclaims inarticulately. "Now THAT'S what I want from my ma-an, my man, my ma-a-a-a-an!!" Ella Mae sings out, pulling the helpless sailor inside her dress, her breasts wrapped around him, his tool embedded deep inside her. She bounds off happily to the Justice of the Peace where they can quickly say their vows and get on with their billing and cooing ... and more.