Bluto (Brutus), according to E.C. Segar’s assistant Bud Sagendorf, was inspired by British actor Eric Campbell (1890-1917), who played the recurring “big brute” character in many Chaplin shorts (image 1). Another influence is said to be Tyrone Power’s Red Flack, from THE BIG TRAIL (1930) (image 2). An enthusiastic cinemagoer, Popeye creator E.C. Segar often found inspiration in the movies and actors of his day.
(Paul L. Smith of course played Bluto in the 1980 film—you can definitely see a link I think between his version and Power’s Red Flack.)
In Segar’s original comic, Bluto was a one-off character in a long line of villainous goliaths, not the first and not the last, basically a bully-of-the-month. His storyline (“The Eighth Sea”) ran around the time Fleischer Studios started adapting the Popeye comic into an animated series, which I suppose helped Bluto being picked as Popeye’s main rival. In the comic though, Popeye’s nemesis really is the sinister Sea Hag, who returns time and again to torment him. Her first appearance is the best I think—she’s a kind of nocturnal sea demon, haunting her own ship.
Speaking of which (speaking of “witch”). In one of Segar’s stories Eugene the Jeep appears to have killed the Sea Hag (the Jeep’s a mean little bastard). To pay his respects to his old foe, Popeye places the Hag’s lifeless body in a chair and puts a pillow in her back. It’s a weird, touching moment, played straight, and aeons removed from the later cartoons with their one-joke premise and goofy slapstick. Popeye cares about the Hag, who, like him, is at heart a lonely character, an outcast, forever adrift.
I couldn’t find a scan of the the panel online so I’m uploading my own:
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