Out Our Way

J.R. Williams's daily strip follows working-class and rural characters through domestic comedy. Here, a man trapped in a fire chief's chair seeks advice from a colleague while audibly stuck fast—a visual gag built on physical predicament rather than wordplay. Williams employs the established vocabulary of newspaper comics: multiple panels, speech balloons, exaggerated facial expressions, and sequential action flowing left to right. The strip's humor derives from recognizable situations and character types, anchoring its appeal to readers encountering the same social types in their communities. By the 1920s, such strips populated Sunday and daily papers nationwide, establishing the visual and narrative grammar that would become foundational to the emerging comic book medium.