Ham Gravy: Man of Mystery

[doc]

Okay, so what was the deal with ol' Harold "Ham" Gravy? In most of the promotional/group/character archive artwork that I've seen of him, he's dressed like a cowboy. But from what I recall from the classic strips, there really wasn't a lot cowboy-ish about him. Was he supposed to be a cowboy? If not, why is he usually depicted as such?

Doc

[Sparky]

The picture of Ham on my website was taken from the Mike Higgs Popeye book, but flipping through my new "I Yam What I Yam", which features a decent amount of Ham, I haven't seen him dressed that way once. That must have been a specific, memorable storyline, where he was dressed that way. Normally he wears white pants, white shirt, black tie, black coat, and sometimes a white cap with a black band.

I don't have a working scanner at this time, but hopefully I can eventually get some images from this book onto my site. That's weird, I didn't know the "cowboy" image of Ham was so prevalent.