Comic strips

Out Our Way: Tales From the Bunkhouse

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D. D. Degg January 4, 2022 2 minutes 1 comment

The Public Domain post got me to thinking there was one 1925 continuity
that ran into 1926 and we might as well show the complete run here.

J. R. Williams’ Out Our Way began in 1922 and in a few years it had become a very popular comic panel, appearing in many newspapers across the nation (usually paired with the equally well received Our Boarding House panel by Gene Ahern from the same NEA syndicate).

Out Our Way was a down-home slice of life humor cartoon about subjects everyone could relate. With subtitles such as Born Thirty Years Too Soon, Why Mothers Get Gray, Bull of the Woods (machine shop), The Worry Wart, and Heroes Are Made – Not Born.

One subset had no ongoing legend, but became known as The Cowboy Cartoons.

One of these panels, the December 4, 1925 issue, has gone down in comics history as the first newspaper comic to show dead bodies “on screen.”

During our showing below the Cowboys appeared every Tuesday and Friday, there was a (admittedly choppy) continuity built in to these twice weekly scenes. This will include that December 4th panel which was part of a sequence that ended in 1926.

In Act One we will get acquainted with the characters.

(click on images to embiggen; click twice to supersize)

1925

6-30-25

9-18-25

9-22-25

9-25-25

9-29-25

10-2-25

10-6-25

10-9-25

10-13-25

10-16-25

10-20-25

10-23-25

11-3-25

The drama comes in Act Two

11-6-25

11-10-25

11-13-25

11-17-25

11-20-25

11-24-25

12-1-25

12-4-25

12-8-25

12-11-25

12-15-25

12-18-25

12-22-25

12-29-25

1926

1-1-26

1-5-26

1-8-26

1-12-26

Denouement

1-15-26

1-19-26

1-26-26

The story can be read in context with all the other panels at Comic Book Plus,
where it seems years of Out Our Way have fallen into public domain before the 95 years.

The Cowboy Cartoons have been collected in a really nice, and much cleaner, edition.

More Out Our Way from Bruce Simon and Ron Evry.