Obscurity of the Day, Revisited: The Wandering Goat Bolivar

We featured Hal Coffman‘s The Wandering Goat Bolivar as an obscurity almost a decade ago, but all I had to share at the time was a black and white sample. I came across this additional Cole Johnson scan of a color version of the strip so thought I would throw it up here, just a tad belatedly.

Odd how they can’t seem to keep the red sky from bleeding into those doggone word balloons when they touch it. I hate when that happens.

One comment on “Obscurity of the Day, Revisited: The Wandering Goat Bolivar

  1. All the Haskell strips are pretty obscure, and I guess this is as good as they get. Frank Crane was about the only (at that time) really well known 'toonist they had. Obviously someone took an artistic choice to color in some of the word balloons, maybe just to see how it'd look. I think the reason why they aren't usually pigmented is because they are supposed to be invisible, like the spooky black ghost guys that move things along in a Bunraku play. If they are colored in, they seem more like they're supposed to be part of the physical world the cartoon characters inhabit.

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