Are Brutus and Bluto the same character?
Bluto appeared as a minor character in the strip in 1932. He became famous in the Fleischer cartoons where he was quite nasty. Brutus was created later because King Features Syndicate thought Paramount owned the copyright to Bluto (which was not true since he appeared in the strip). Thus when made-for-TV cartoons were created, Brutus was the villain. from http://www.math.pitt.edu/~bard/bardware/popeye/faq.
