Why no Northampton, Massachusetts farmhouse in the Fred Wolf series?

[neatoman]

The short answer is that Fred Wolf didn't care about the comics (or hiring a story editor). If they couldn't bother getting Baxter's Skin tone right, what makes you they would care about anything else? What little The Fred Wolf cartoon has in common with Mirage is pretty much just there to market the toys. Anything that didn't directly tie into selling toys or cutting corners wasn't seen as important. It's a lot easier to just have random adventures, either in the main setting or easily explained away as trip. Changing the setting long term would require them to have an actual plan.