RUSTY RUMPLE

 For a handful of years in the forties, Timely-not-yet-Marvel-Comics published various stories featuring their BLONDIE knockoff, RUSTY. (See, Blondie was blonde, so Rusty was redheaded.) In both the original and the imitation, most of the gags revolved around the way the goofus husband endured an endless stream of humiliations, brought about either his own ineptitude or just the whims of cruel fate.

No one can study the BLONDIE comic strip or comic book serials easily, since the owning syndicate apparently clamps down on fair use hard, to judge from that franchise's absence from free sites. From my own spotty collection I'd generalize that Blondie in comic books was a bit more violent toward her husband than the one in the strips at times, occasionally hitting Dagwood with a vase if he did something really stupid. But most of the time, Dagwood suffered punishment from other sources: neighbors, bosses, police, etc.

RUSTY probably followed the model of the strip, for the redheaded homemaker only gets directly violent a few times. From what I've seen reprinted, the only time she slugs anyone, it's a stranger she thinks is hitting on her.

The dominant tendency in the feature, going on what I've seen reprinted, is seen in the page below. Rusty would just look on pacifically whenever her extraordinarily stupid husband Johnny-- who made Dagwood Bumstead look intelligent-- destroyed himself somehow. 

Other women were not quite so forbearing toward the schmuck.

Though Rusty usually steered clear of Johnny's disasters, sometimes she would inadvertently clobber him while trying to help.

Rusty did have incredible leg muscles, since here she is kicking both Johnny and a mooching horse out the door.

And here she is, giving him wood.

She does do the "bash him over the head" thing once, but manages to clout her uncle instead. And she at least threatens him with the archetypal rolling pin, though I haven't found an example of her using it for real.

Possibly the uncredited scripter's oddest trope was to undermine Johnny's ego when he thought his wife was stronger than he was. And what kind of 1945 newspaper would carry an article about men being weaker than women? 

Rusty does occasionally get into jealous-wife mode, though again, it's rather low on the slapstick violence.

One amusing sequence has her complaining that Johnny's pained outcries (because of an injury he inflicted on himself) will make the neighbors think "I'm beating you"-- again, making it seem perfectly natural for people to think of a slender young woman being able to beat up a full-grown (if infantile) man. As if to confirm the fantasy, she "accidentally" drops a hammer on his head.

And here's another strength gag, where Rusty foments a jealous wife's clobbering of her bully-husband and then takes credit for the violence herself.

Rusty's most prolonged bout of husband-beating (maybe that's where the neighbors really got the idea) is kept off-panel. Then at the last moment it's revealed that the events of the story are just a dream Johnny has, which makes me speculate how aware of he is that he's in an ersatz domme-sub relationship with his actual wife.