Out Our Way
was a single-panel cartoon by J. R. Williams which was syndicated for decades after it first appeared in a half-dozen small-market newspapers on March 20, 1922.
Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association, the cartoon series was noted for its depiction of American rural life and the various activities and regular routines of families in small towns. The panel introduced a cast of continuing characters, including the cowboy Curly and ranch bookkeeper Wes. The content was based on Williams' own life experiences, as noted by Michael H. Price in the Fort Worth Business Press: Cartooning can become a higher art, if motivated by urges greater than rattling off an easy gag or beating the next deadline. Thus do any perceived barriers between Charlie Russell and J.R. Williams prove irrelevant. Williams’ mass-consumption newspaper cartoons come from a font of artistry and inspiration as deep and personal as anything that drove Russell. Jim Williams’ Out Our Way is the great masterpiece of cowboy cartooning, surviving in obscurity for an eventual rediscovery. The feature draws upon the writer-artist’s personal background as a muleskinner (and industrial machinist, and prizefighter, and family man) in ways that make the individual episodes — each self-contained panel suggesting a larger story — as resonant today as when new... “It was just this little knack I’d developed for drawing things,” Williams told The Saturday Evening Post in 1953. “Nobody outside the bunkhouse or the machine shop had ever seemed to want my style of small-town humor, but I was too stubborn to give up.” By the 1950s, Out Our Way had attracted a readership in the millions. Williams’ range of experiences, coupled with a gentle sarcasm and a keen observational sense, made his work unique. He tapped into the commonplace happenings of everyday life — childhood in a small town, the earthy humor that lightens the rigors of ranch life and the factory floor — and became an entertaining chronicler of a day before the 20th Century had come of age.
(wikipedia.org)
James Robert Williams
J. R. Williams (1888 – 1957, USA)
Looking for adventure, James Robert Williams ran away from home when he was in his mid-teens. He worked at a ranch for a while, then signed up with the U.S. Cavalry for three years, and played football with a young Lieutenant George Patton. Returning home to his parents in Ohio, J. R. Williams got married and took a steady job at a crane manufacturing company, where he started drawing cover designs for the company’s catalog.
In 1921, after years of submitting ideas for strips to various syndicates, his one-panel cartoon gag series ‘Out Our Way’ appeared for the first time. The success of this series led to a Sunday feature, ‘Out Our way, With the Willits’. Artists George Scarbo and Neg Cochran assisted Williams on the strip, that ran until 1978. Another strip he did was titled ‘Bull of the Woods’, about a machine shop boss. Williams bought his own ranch in 1930, and died in 1957.
(lambiek.net)