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Long-time readers of Playboy magazine may remember that in the 60's and 70's
it featured a strip called "Little Annie Fanny" by Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman. "Fanny" was
probably the most elaborately-produced strip of all time, at least in a men's magazine; the artwork
was done in a way that was slow, painstaking, and expensive. "Fanny" inspired many imitators;
for instance, Penthouse had "Oh Wicked Wanda" (nicely painted by Ron Embleton), and Britain's
Mayfair magazine ran a two-page strip called "Carrie". Now, Mayfair was to Playboy
as Geo is to Cadillac, and "Carrie" abandoned the satirical approach of "Fanny" in favor of simple
plot contrivances that each month resulted in Carrie losing most or all of her clothes.
We are somewhat troubled by the fact that poor Carrie was often an innocent victim in these stories
rather than simply being a girl of loose morals, but will not further analyze here what this says
about the state of British culture at that time. Still, whatever the strip's moral shortcomings, the
artists were fairly capable, and canings were twice featured.
Here we see the better of the two,
drawn by the late Don Lawrence in the November 1972 issue (Volume 7 No. 11). In this episode, Carrie
really hasn't done anything to deserve being
caned; rather, she appears to be a young teacher rudely taken advantage of and nearly assaulted
by her male pupils (and this may be too charitable an interpretation of the wordless panels that
precede those shown here). The headmaster arrives, seeing her naked with the boys, and reaching the
wrong conclusion is determined to bend her over a desk for the cane. We doubt that Lawrence was into
the spanking scene because after the caning her bottom is only light red with no stripes, but he does
position Carrie nicely in the fourth panel.
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