The Heroes of Rural Home ... again!

It's my second installment of "The Heroes of Rural Home", this time featuring Maureen Marine, The Blue Circle and The Judge. The Blue Circle continues to get no respect in his own book as the cover feature of the third issue is Maureen Marine.

Read the stories first, then my mindless ramblings if you want.

Maureen Marine's story is from "Blue Circle Comics # 1" (June 1944), while Blue Circle's appearance is taken from "Blue Circle Comics # 2"(July 1944 ... I already posted his first adventure). The Judge's tale comes from "Red Circle Comics # 1" (January 1945). From what I can gather, The Judge only had two appearances, in the first two issues of Red Circle Comics, while both Maureen Marine & Blue Circle ran in all five issues of Blue Circle Comics.

The stories featured here were taken from scans available at http://goldenagecomics.co.uk. If you've never gone to that site, here's what you need to know: Registering with the site is free & easy, any problems you encounter are quickly addressed by the moderators of the site, all the comics available are "Public Domain" and they don't cost a cent to download. Some of the files are pretty large, so if you have a dial-up connection, you have my sympathies. I had a dial-up connection for the longest time and simply gave-up trying to download anything bigger than 30 megabytes because I'ld constantly lose my connection and have to start over.

In case you're wondering: Yes, I plan to post stories from Rural Home or other companies in groups. It's kind of fun to pick & choose features from one company and make a blog entry out of it. It's like making a reprint comic without doing the work or spending the money that a regular printed comic would include.

To everyone who reads this ... Happy Holidays! This will probably be my only post this week, as there is simply too much to do and not enough time to do it. I've got people visting today, a home to clean-up tomorrow, wrapping & baking to get started on, a whole day of Xmas fun followed by travelling on the weekend ... and maybe I'll squeeze in some work at some point, too.

Some cool sites to visit

The internet's a big place, so there's tons of stuff that can (and probably does) get over-looked. In an effort to make life easier for people, I've included two sections of links in my blog. The first, "Cool Comic Links", are for websites where you can read comics or check-out various pieces of comic book artwork. I've added some new links today ...

The first new addition to the "Cool Comic Links" is http://www.bpib.com/index.html, a site run by Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. As an active member of http://goldenagecomics.co.uk/, Jim has gladly donated his Golden Age comic book collection to the site to be scanned & shared with the world, as well as being active in many of the discussions of the extremely friendly message boards. "BPIB" features over 100 biographies of artists from various fields, including comic books. If you like looking at pretty pictures, it's a nice place to spend some time.

Another addition, this time a blog, is http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/. I doubt anyone coming to my little corner of the internet hasn't stumbled upon Pappy's "blogzine" by now, but just in case, go check it out. He posts a lot of Golden Age comic book stories on a more frequent basis than I do, and is fairly balanced as far as what genres he features.

Another blog, http://goldenagecomicbookstories.blogspot.com/, is light on stories but heavy on all sorts of other artwork. For me to try and describe what you'll find there would not do it justice. If you like looking at artwork from a single artist or viewing the covers of various publications in a single genre, like science-fiction for example, it's worth checking-out.

That's enough for me today. I'm tired and feeling lazy, so I'm gonna go watch me some hockey.

Art Appreciation: Martin Filchock

Today's stories are: Mighty Man from "Amazing-man Comics # 5" [September 1939]; The Ermine from "Fantoman # 2" [August 1940]; The Owl from "Funny Pages volume 4 number 1" [January 1940]; The CC Kid from "The Comics Magazine Funny Pages # 4-6" [August-November 1936]; The Electric Ray from "Amazing-man Comics # 26" [January 1942]; Windy from "The Comics Magazine Funny Pages # 5" [September 1936]; and Fire-Man from "Liberty Scouts Comics # 2" [June 1941].

To learn a little more about Martin Filchock and his career outside of comic books, visit the following sites: The Christian Science Monitor has an interview with Filchock from August 2006. Looking Back Magazine features Filchock's "Defective Detective", a feature similar to his "Check and Double Check" found in "Highlights For Children". The website, Everything Knoxville, has an interview with Filchock from September 2009, while AmericanProfile.com has an earlier interview from October 2004.

I'ld ramble-on today, but I'm fairly annoyed about something, and I don't want those feelings bleeding-over into something like this blog, which is supposed to be fun for all involved. So go and enjoy 40+ pages of Golden Age fun before you dart to the malls to finish (or start) your Christmas shopping.