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The Spirit, a comic character of great historical importance, spanks Ellen Dolan, whose modest
sins here were fibbing and conniving to lure the Spirit to her college campus under false pretenses.
This panel, a reproduction taken from a recent magazine,
was originally the cover of the Spirit's comic from December 1, 1940, which appeared in the
Sunday comics section of many newspapers of that era. (It's hard for modern readers to appreciate
how much bigger and better Sunday newspaper comics used to be). Will Eisner, whose contribution
to the comics medium is legendary, came up with the spanking to show how a comic-book hero could
become enmeshed in a dull, everyday muddle. Probably he considered this a humorous contrast to
the constant string of heroic deeds that seemed to fill the days of comics' other leading men
of the period. Eisner, who was not into the scene, was nonetheless very fond of this
spanking panel and had the original hanging in his studio for many years.
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