1930’s Jim Williams Scrapbook Out Our Way Daily Comic Strips

Description: This is a cool item. Full of Vintage comic strips from 1938-1939. 27 pages with 216 comic strips. Also has original article cut out newspaper from 1938 inside cover. ----------- 2 ----------- ARTIST WILLIAMS IS COLORFUL MAN Renews Contract with NEA Service to Draw 'Out Our Way' Cartoons. AHEAD OF ALL FEATURES BY ERNEST LYNN J. R. Williams, familiarly known to readers of the Enquirer and News for his famed "Out Our Way" cartoons, has just signed another long-term contract with NEA Ser- vice, Inc. This means that the work of this noted cowboy artist, often called the Will Rogers of the comic art field, will continue to be pub- lished in Battle Creek exclusively in this newspaper. The ever-popular "Out Our Way," a topnotch comic since it made its first appearance nearly 17 years ago, is now the most widely used of all newspaper features. Approxi- mately 725 daily newspapers pub- lish it six days a week. Two hun- dred and fifteen papers run Wil- liams' Sunday page, "The Willetts." These do not include the numerous papers in foreign countries which translate the feature. Meet Jim Williams Of the many millions of daily "Out Our Way" readers a large share has often wondered what it was specifically about this series of homely, "human interest" drawings that held such charm. Perhaps the best explanation lies in the fact that the reader can so readily identify the subject matter with his own experience. And behind this lies a story, the story of Jim Wil- liams himself. First, meet him as he is today. and on his home ground, which is a 45,000-acre cattle ranch near Prescott, Ariz.-a ranch boasting about 800 head of cattle, 45 horses a swimming pool, a concrete tennis court, and a lake. He is middle- aged, sandy-haired, compact and muscular. He has the squint that comes from long-distance looking He wears hoots overalls a 10 mallar ----------- 3 ----------- The ever-popular "Out Our Way, 23 a topnotch comic since it made its first appearance nearly 17 years ago, is now the most widely used of all newspaper features. Approxi- mately 725 daily newspapers pub- lish it six days a week. Two hun- dred and fifteen papers run Wil- liams' Sunday page, "The Willetts." These do not include the numerous papers in foreign countries which translate the feature. Meet Jim Williams Of the many millions of daily "Out Our Way readers a large share has often wondered what it was specifically about this series of homely, "human interest" drawings that held such charm. Perhaps the best explanation lies in the fact that the reader can so readily identify the subject matter with his own experience. And behind this lies a story, the story of Jim Wil- liams himself. First, meet him as he is today. and on his home ground, which is a 45,000-acre cattle. ranch. near Prescott, Ariz.-a ranch boasting about 800 head of cattle, 45 horses, a swimming pool, a concrete tennis court, and a lake. He is middle- aged, sandy-haired, compact and muscular. He has the squint that comes from long-distance looking. He wears boots, overalls, a 10-gallon hat. In short, he looks as if he might have stepped out of one of his own "Out Our Way" cowboy cartoons. After you've known him five minutes you start calling him Jim, and he likes you for it. This is the west that Jim Wil- liams loves, and the ranch in the Arizona mountains is the realiza- tion of a life-time ambition. He spends his winters in Los Angeles, but this. he will tell you, is largely a concession to Mrs. Williams and their two grown children, Helen and Bob, the latter just out of the Uni- versity of Southern California. Wil- liams says, "I never was much of a hand for the big cities." His career as a comic artist be- gan with NEA Service early in 1922. Before this his life had been an almost unbelievable record of adventure and excitement. These are some of the things that Jim Williams has been: College football player, railroad fireman, cowboy, mule-skinner, cavalryman, prize fighter, policeman, machinist, artist. All this is still a part of him. It forms the philosophy and back- ground without which there never would have been an "Out Our Way." It accounts for his rare. ability to meet so many different classes of readers on common ground and in terms of the fa- miliar. Jim Williams re-lives his own life in his feature-to a greater degree, perhaps, than any other artist. His daily procession of "Out Our Ways" contains a cowboy series, a "Worry Wart" series (about kids), a "Why Mothers Get Gray" series, a ma- chine shop series (featuring his old foreman, the "Bull of the Woods"), an occasional cartoon of the old border cavalry days, and a "Born Thirty Years Too Soon" series, the last being a nostalgic recollection of life as it was a generation ago. ----------- 4 ----------- Now Meet James Robert His full name is James Robert Williams. He was born in Nova Scotia of parents who had come over from England. He was still a baby when his family moved to Detroit, and at the age of 14 he was playing football at Mt. Union college in Ohio. For that matter, he was firing on the Pennsylvania railroad when he was only 15-but let Jim tell it. "Back in those days," he says, "we didn't have any complicated eligibility rules in college football. I was big and husky and tough, and that's what counted. The schol- astic requirements were pretty elas- tic, too, which is how I got in. I was taking up art. "At 15 I was as big as I am to- day. I was tired of school and I got a job as railroad fireman by passing for 21. Didn't have any trouble, either." But this job didn't hold him long. He headed west and landed a job in Kansas as a mule skinner. He drifted on, and tied up with a cat- tle outfit. He cooked for the cow- hands. He punched cattle. One day, down in Texas, he saw some cav- alrymen come into town and he liked their looks. So he enlisted and served a three-year hitch. He did a lot of cooking in the army, too. And he did considerable fighting with his fists. He was hard as hickory, and as tough. He weighed about 163 pounds, was as light on his feet as a tap dancer, and was quite a scrapper. He became the light heavyweight champion of his outfit and when his enlistment was up he turned professional. "The first fur coat I ever bought my wife was with part of a purse I won as a pro," he tells you. "She made me quit, though. She just plain didn't like it. And when a big feller busted my nose one night, that ended it." ----------- 4 -----------

Price: 120 USD

Location: Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin

End Time: 2024-12-17T17:00:00.000Z

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