It may surprise our readers to learn that although we love paddling, Wonder Woman, and the spankings she gives and receives, we've never really cared for all the paddlings among the Holliday girls that took place in WW's comics. Why? For one thing, as common as sorority paddling fantasies are among spankos, the reality (as is so often the case) falls short of the fantasy, and sorority hazing practices can be quite unpleasant (as we'll see to a certain extent below). For another thing, while some of Charles Moulton's personal kinks can seem almost quaint and charming at times when Wonder Woman herself is involved, here their darker aspects come into relief against the background of semi-willing participants not blessed with super-human powers with which to defend themselves. In brief, there is a dark side to the world of D/S, but we'll say no more about that subject here.

Who are the Holliday girls? They're friends of Wonder Woman, which as you might expect means they're really into spanking. Actually, that's probably why Charles Moulton (William Moulton Marston) brought them into the strip in the first place - when you think about it, a group of college girls aren't really natural supporting characters for a superhero strip, but they can more easily run around spanking each other at the drop of a hat without arousing suspicion than, say, the D.A.R. or some other all-female community organization. And of course, this is the second all-female group that WW pals around with, the first being her sister Amazons on Paradise Island, who do their share of spanking also as we'll see next time.

We decided to consolidate all our Holliday Girls' paddlings into one page, so here they are. The panels below have been taken from multiple sources, but the only one we have any documentation for is The Absorbascon. The Absorbascon, by the way, was a device Hawkman and Hawkgirl used to gather all the world's knowledge when they arrived on earth.

Wonder Woman BL sorority paddling

Let's go to lunch at the dining hall of "Beeta Lamda" sorority. (We're not sure why Moulton didn't call it Beta Lambda, or given its proclivities, Beat-a Lambda). The punishment for catty, jealous girls? A cat-costume, no food, and swats with a boat oar (at least it looks more like a paddle than those barrel staves Peter usually drew). Most sororities have a president - this one has a "grand mistress of spanks and slams" - hoo-boy! At least they've got their priorities straight. This may not seem too bad by iteself, as perhaps the "jealous cat" is really deserving of some punishment, but it looks worse when considered along with the two scenes that follow.

masked members paddle a pledge

Art by Harry Peter. © DC Comics Inc. Posted by the Web-Ed on 01/29/2010

Much as we like paddling in general, as we mentioned earlier we've always hated hazing practices, which seem to us like an indulgence in cruelty and degradation. Case in point: While stuffing her face, Etta Candy sentences another girl to confinement and more paddling by some hooded characters who are apparently too cowardly to show their faces - and it's back to the barrel stave paddles, by the way. This bunch is so into heavy punishment that they've even got a paddling picture on the wall! Seriously, this is looking more and more twisted. It gives a disturbing glimpse of what life would be like if Moulton's ideas of submission to female authority had actually been put into practice (we briefly discussed those ideas here).

members paddle and humilate another pledge

Maybe this next panel would be redeemed by the context in which it occurs if we knew what that was, but we doubt it.* On her hands and knees, blindfolded, face smudged and clothes dirty from the previous festivities, an initiate (or candidate) is further taunted and paddled, and about to be given the "Hitler cure", whatever that might be. Had enough?

There is one other Beeta Lamda paddling we remember seeing in a WW reprint thirty years ago but can't find now - Etta and the girls are testing candidates, one of whom is holding her ankles and receiving a swat. That one is at least more defensible on its own than these are, and we'll post it here if we ever locate it.

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* It's possible from the dialogue and the wartime setting that the victim here was an actual spy. While espionage is a crime deserving severe retribution, would this really be the proper venue for trial and punishment?


beeta lamda girls chasing villain with paddles

Here's an item we found after setting up the rest of this page: it seems that not only do the girls of Beeta Lamda paddle each other, they also chase after various villains with cries of "Give him a lamda beta [sic] treatment!" and "Paddles up, sisters!". We don't find paddling bad guys (or preferably bad girls) too troubling in itself, but all the elements together (bizarre villain, wild sorority girls, odd character design) make this scene strange enough to have qualified for the "Weird Spankings" series if we hadn't exempted Wonder Woman from consideration.


Maybe this isn't the best time to launch into a criticism of Harry Peter's artwork, but after looking at all these panels, it occurs to us the more we see of it the less we like it. True, no one style can be exclusively "valid", and superhero artwork was generally less sophisticated during this era than it was to become in the 60's, but even so, it's obvious that Peter's work on Wonder Woman cannot compare with contemporary efforts such as Simon & Kirby's Captain America, C. C. Beck's Captain Marvel, Will Eisner's Spirit, or Jack Cole's Plastic Man. His perspective is baffling, his anatomy grotesque (and apparently unintentionally so), and his panels have a cramped feel (in fairness, this last may be Moulton's fault for overwriting). Is Etta Candy of normal height as she appears to be in the "Hitler treatment" panel, or is she a deformed gnome who stands about waist-high as she does in the "Dr. Psycho" panels? It's interesting to contemplate what the effect on Wonder Woman would have been if Moulton's stories had been drawn by another artist - would they have lost the odd charm that at least some of them had, or would a more realistic style perhaps have rendered their deviant sexuality even more blatant?

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