Chicago Spanking Review

Abbie an' Slats #1

spanking from abbie an' slats comic strip

With some invaluable help from JimC, we've been able to locate a lot of old comic strip spankings which of course we're going to present in this gallery. The first of these is Abbie an' Slats, which enjoyed a very long run (1937 - 1971). Co-created by Al Capp (writer) and Raeburn van Buren (artist), it featured cousins "Slats" and Abigail Scrapple. Capp of course is best known as the creator of Li'l Abner, which predated Abbie an' Slats by several years and was the more successful of the two strips. As we noted here, Li'l Abner had a number of spankings over the years. We know of four from Abbie an' Slats with Dan Rivera recalling a fifth that we're still on the lookout for, and of course there may even have been others beyond that.

Van Buren had been a successful illustrator before Capp lured him into the world of comic strips, and you can see, despite the quality of this reproduction, that he was a good draftsman. Luckily, we have some episodes before and after the spanking, so we'll be able to put it into some kind of context. Although we're not experts on this strip, we'll try to add a few helpful notes along the way. The copyright notices are very hard to read, but we think these examples all date from 1939. [Later confirmed in 2017 that the year was, in fact, 1939. - Web-Ed]

We can't see the dates clearly enough to be sure we've got the continuity right, but we think this one comes before the others. It doesn't much matter since the rest hold together without this one anyway. We meet two couples, Larry (the cowboy) and Becky, and Slats and Margie. But this is all mixed-up, as we shall see: Becky belongs with Slats, and Margie with the cowboy.

08/14: Our mis-matched couples attend an open-air dance.

08/16: An unlikely turn of events results in the lights at the party going out.

08/18: In the dark, the cowboy searches for Becky, and tells another girl about Margie, whom he describes as a "she-coyote."

But the big fool didn't recognize that the girl in the dark is none other than Margie herself! Enraged, she slaps him across the face - so he spanks her! Frankly, we think she had pretty good cause to slap him.

03/10/2017 Update: here is a new scan of this day's strip from Sweetspot. The date is now known to be August 19, 1939. (Click to increase in size).

08/23: Meanwhile, our other pair of lovers, Slats and Becky, have also run into each other. But in the darkness, Slats doesn't recognize Becky, and thinking she's another girl, confesses his love for Becky. The two are happily reunited as the lights come back on ...

08/24: Becky and Slats spy Margie and Larry together on a bench. We see that she's still feeling the effects of the spanking (always good), and she even admits to them that she's been spanked! Best of all, the spanking convinces her that he's just the guy she wants! Once again, a good spanking leads to a successful romance -- hooray!

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