Home, Home on Derange
Rural Home Publishers was one of the also-rans of the big surge in comics in the 40’s (ending in 53), really made up of a number of different companies that wanted to see if they could make some cash off those funny books, there were dozens of comics published by such companies as Orbit,(with Taffy Comics home of Wiggles the Wonderworm,) Women’s Farm Publishing (Circus Comics,) Aiwell (Blazing and others) but all pretty much done by Rural Home.
The thing that set Rural apart from the rest was that most of their magazines almost never went beyond 12 issues, and they were almost never very good, or memorable.
Still they did have their moments.
They had the first Asian superhero, the Green Turtle, who was even written and drawn by Asian American artist Chu Hing, he and his side-kick Burma Boy lasted for all of 5 issues.
After that we have to push things to say ‘Oh yeah… look at what they did’ such as
Well they had Crash Kid in the two issues of Cannonball Comics, he was a 14 or 16 year old boy who drove cars into gangsters… er… and he was the first superhero to be drawn with thigh boots as part of their costume, a fashion statement that would not show up again until the late 70’s or early 80’s.
There was Patches Comics…. And… hmmm… and ahhh? Just what the hell is going on here?
That’s just not right! (but I’m willing to bet there are at least 2 or 3 `adults only’ groups on Yahoogroups devoted to whatever that is.)
And then there was their longest running comic which made it to 54 issues, “Wanted” which featured covers displaying such socially redeeming images as the one in the lover right hand corner.
This comic series got mentioned twice in Fredrick Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” so while Rural Home might not have made much of a contribution to the history of comics, they did do more than their part in almost ending it.
