Yesterday, I said that, while I'm properly in awe of Winsor McCay's artistry, I don't feel total reverence for his classic strip, Little Nemo, because I'm a storyteller, not an artist. As Gilda suggested in the comments yesterday, his illustrations were amazing, but the actual storytelling was not his long suit.
Here's a cartoonist who appeals to the storyteller.
J.R. Williams (1888-1970) drew a daily panel called "Out Our Way" that alternated among several settings: The days of his childhood, current family life, life on a cattle ranch and life in a machine shop, with some variations within those categories.
For example, "Heroes are made - not born" is not the caption of the above panel, but the title of a series in which young boys face life's hard realities -- small moments like coming home beat from backyard football, only to find that the coalman has made a delivery and guess who gets to haul it all down into the cellar?
There is so much to like about this 1926 silent panel! Without words, he tells you about the football game and about this young fellow's family's expectations: The scuttle and a second bucket are laid out on the lawn, and there's no chance they're sitting there waiting for anyone but him. There's also a suggestion of how impossible it would be for him to plead exhaustion or ask to do it in the morning. Part of Williams' sense of humor included how youngsters tried to get around their chores and how hopeless their efforts were, sometimes in "Heroes are made - not born" and sometimes in another series he called "Why mothers get gray."
For about six years at the end of the '90s, one of my tasks was to assemble the weekly "Lookback" historic feature for the paper, which entailed going through all the papers for that week from 100, 75, 50 and 25 years ago.
"Out Our Way," which ran from the early 1920s up through the 1970s, was one of a small number of comics in the "50 years ago" newspapers of the late '40s. The others were "Alley Oop," "Red Ryder" and "Freckles and His Friends." "Red Ryder" wasn't much -- I suspect its iconic appeal came more from the movies than the comic strip, though the strip may have appealed to youngsters because of its simplicity. The others, however, were clever and nuanced and brought my "research" to a halt each issue.
But it was "Out Our Way" that really stuck. Williams was unabashedly sentimental and nostalgic, but he had lived the things he depicted: He'd not only grown up in an age of coal scuttles, but he'd worked ranches and he'd worked in machine shops, and, as gentle as his humor was, it was spot-on, and he managed to tell his stories in such a way that, once you'd seen enough of his work to get into the rhythms of his storytelling, you didn't have to have been there to get it.
For example, how much more do you have to be told about Wes or about working cattle to know his story from this simple panel? (In this case, the caption is specific to the cartoon.)
Oh thankyou thankyou thankyou! I had forgotten about "Out Our Way," and I'm so glad to have it back in my mind. It was one of my dad's favorites, and the reason why was pretty simple: his stories were very similar, both in tone and era, to the ones Williams showed so well and so economically. You might remember one of my dad's that illustrates the similarity I see: http://sherwords.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-man-and-two-boys-really-makes.html . "The Wrapper" could have been about Bob Ellwood if Wilbur's farm had been about 1500 miles west of where it was.
25 more panels (these from 1922) here: http://www.barnaclepress.com/list.php?directory=OutOurWay .
Thanks again, Mike. A welcome lift going into the work week.
Posted by: Sherwood | 01/24/2011 at 10:08 AM
The link to your father's story makes today's entry a two-fer, and I strongly urge everyone to click on it. And, though I've read it before, I never made the connection with JR Wiliiams, but how he would have loved that story!!!
Posted by: Mike Peterson | 01/24/2011 at 03:59 PM
Didn't Williams also do a strip about a family named The Willetts? I have fond memories of that from my childhood. And my Uncle Frank, who had a machine shop, had a set of the machine shop panels in color. I suppose when he died they went in the trash. I was way too young to have any say in the matter. Thanks for the great links!
Posted by: Mary in Ohio | 01/24/2011 at 04:59 PM
Mary -- check the Wikipedia link (his name, above). The strip was originally called "Out Our Way with the Willits" which would cover your memory. And the machine shop strips were wonderful stuff -- made me think of my ex-father in law, as well as the backshop guys I was working with back then.
Posted by: Mike Peterson | 01/24/2011 at 05:35 PM
Don't know if you've run across this new-to-me site that reproduces 66 panels of Out Our Way from the 1940s and 50s.
http://rolandanderson.se/OutOurWay/oowstrips.php
Posted by: D.D.Degg | 01/24/2011 at 08:34 PM
I think ""The Willets" was the Sunday strip. Out Our Way used to appear at the top of the comics page in our local paper, next to "Our Boarding House." "Boots and Her Buddies" and "Alley Oop" were among the ones below. "Freckles and His Friends" and "Red Ryder" were at the bottom. And these memories are from the 30s and 40s! I'd rank "Red Ryder" higher than you do. Fred Harmon was a real cowboy artist, and his character, Little Beaver, was popular. AND there was the Daisy air rifle tie-in. (Oh, yeah -- Roy Crane's Cap'n Easy was in there, too.)
Posted by: Mudduck | 01/26/2011 at 12:18 AM
I PURCHASED 2 BOXES OF JR WILLIAMS COMIC STRIPS I HAVE 3 OR 4 DIFFERENT ONES I AM INTERESTED IN SELLING THEM BUT DONT KNOW WHERE TO GO. THE COMIC STRIPS ARE IN GOOD CONDITION EXCEPT THE PAPER IS YELLOWISH I COULD REALLY USE SOME HELP FOR CONTACS TO BUY THEM
Posted by: DIANE BLONDEEL | 10/18/2012 at 05:10 PM