Out Our Way

Out Our Way was an American single-panel comic strip series by Canadian-American comic strip artist J. R. Williams. 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. Out Our Way ran from 1922 to 1977, at its peak appearing in more than 700 newspapers. Publication history Out Our Way first appeared in a half-dozen small-market newspapers on March 20, 1922. Williams used Out Our Way as an umbrella title for several alternating series, including The Bull of the Woods, Why Mothers Get Gray, Born Thirty Years Too Soon, The Worrywarts and Heroes Are Made - Not Born. The success of the daily panel prompted a Sunday feature, but it was not a grouping of panels, as in the Sunday Grin and Bear It. Instead, the characters of Why Mothers Get Gray were expanded into a Sunday strip, Out Our Way with the Willits (aka The Willets). Williams' assistants on the Sunday strip were Neg Cochran and George Scarbo (whose own strip The Comic Zoo sometimes ran next to The Willets as a Sunday sidebar feature).