Blazing Comics #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeBlazing Comics #1 (June 1944) is widely regarded as the debut of the first Asian-American superhero in the medium's history: the Green Turtle, a costumed aviator who fights Japanese occupation forces alongside Chinese guerrillas in WWII-era China. At a moment when American popular media routinely portrayed Asians through dehumanizing 'Yellow Peril' stereotypes, creator Chu Hing's stories depicted Chinese characters as heroic allies — a genuine counter-narrative that was almost unique in the wartime comics landscape. The issue also carries a layered creative mystery: Hing reportedly wanted his hero to be explicitly Chinese-American, but the publisher refused, so the artist responded by systematically concealing the Green Turtle's face throughout the run — a quiet act of resistance embedded in the visual language of the pages themselves. That biographical subtext gave the character renewed cultural resonance seventy years later and inspired Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew's 2014 graphic novel The Shadow Hero, which finally provided the origin story Hing never got to tell.
In "The Valley of the 10,000 Smokes!", set during the war in 1944, a Japanese force captures a town in Yun-Nan to seize explosives and gold. With cunning and courage, Burma Boy and Green Turtle each turn the enemy’s plans against them, using the explosives and local resistance to disrupt the occupation. Written, drawn, and inked by Chu F. Hing, this wartime adventure blends tension and strategy in a story that unfolds across a rugged, high-stakes landscape. The cover by Chu F. Hing captures the explosive intensity of the moment.
In the jungles of Yun-Nan, during a tense wartime raid, the Japanese seize a remote town to claim hidden explosives and gold. Burma Boy uses cunning to trigger a deadly ambush with the explosives, while the Green Turtle manipulates the situation to turn the tide—leading Japanese forces into a trap set by the Nationalists, who reclaim the stolen treasure.
When a mysterious "ghost ship" begins decimating Allied cargo planes over treacherous mountain terrain, Major Red Hawk—a full-blooded American Indian and ace fighter pilot—is called in to stop the impossible: an enemy aircraft that vanishes in clouds of white vapor and seems to have no visible pilot. Red Hawk devises a cunning trap using himself as bait, but uncovering the truth behind the phantom raider will test his wits and his nerve in the Valley of the 10,000 Smokes.
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The book was published in June 1944 under the indicia of Rewl Publications Inc., one of several small imprints that fed content to the umbrella Rural Home Publishing operation based in Chicago — a loose arrangement that also operated under names such as Enwil Associates and Entwil Associates. Chu Hing, a Chinese-American artist whose surname in Chinese naming convention comes first (making him properly 'Chu' rather than 'Hing'), both wrote and drew the Green Turtle feature and is credited as its sole creator in Jerry Bails' authoritative Who's Who of American Comic Books, a credit subsequently verified by researcher Alex Jay in Alter Ego #167 (TwoMorrows, January 2021). After the series ended with issue #5 in March 1945, Hing went on to work for Timely/Marvel and other publishers, though his comics bibliography remained thin; the character and the extraordinary creative circumstances surrounding it lay dormant until rediscovered by Golden Age historians in the internet era.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of the Green Turtle (also known by his Chinese name Ching Quai), widely considered the first Asian-American superhero in comics history, in Blazing Comics #1, cover-dated June 1944.
- Created entirely — script, pencils, and inks — by Chinese-American cartoonist Chu F. Hing, one of the earliest Asian-American artists working in the American comic book industry.
- First appearance of the Green Turtle's sidekick Burma Boy, an orphan the hero rescues from Japanese forces in the debut nine-page story set in Yun-Nan province, China.
- Issue #1 also introduces several other features making their first appearances: the pirate hero Black Buccaneer, aviator Red Hawk, ace detective-magician Mr. Ree, humor strip Super Drooper & Drip, jungle hero Jun-Gal, and war correspondent Tommy Paige.
- Throughout his five-issue run, Hing reportedly kept the Green Turtle's face perpetually obscured — via back-turned poses, shadows, and obstructing figures — as a form of silent protest after the publisher allegedly vetoed making the character's Chinese-American identity explicit.
- Blazing Comics ran for five numbered issues (June 1944 – March 1945) plus a sixth issue that was actually a rebranded Will Rogers title; the Green Turtle appeared in all five original issues.
- The character fell into public domain after the series ended, which enabled Gene Luen Yang (writer) and Sonny Liew (artist) to publish The Shadow Hero (First Second Books, 2014), a graphic novel that provided a formal origin story for the Green Turtle as an explicitly Chinese-American hero.
- Chu Hing's creator credit is verified in two independent scholarly sources: Jerry Bails' Who's Who of American Comic Books and Alex Jay's research published in Alter Ego #167 (January 2021).
Cast · 1 character
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Reprints
Reprinted in Blazing Comics #1 (1946), The Shadow Hero #[nn] (2014), Shadow Hero #[nn] (2016), Gwandanaland Comics #238 (2017)
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