From Mayfair (June 1978). Art by Steve Kingston. Posted by the Web-Ed on 12/16/2011.
Another year went by before Carrie's next spanking in June 1978. This time, Carrie has assumed the duties of a chamber maid, and when she breaks a vase while dusting (not really her fault as she's being groped at the time), over the knee she goes! Although in our opinion not as good an artist as Don Lawrence, Steve Kingston does a decent job here. But despite Carrie's popularity, there were a lot of problems with the strip, especially moral ones - something we've glossed over until now.
To begin with, there's the matter of consensuality. We don't insist on it at CSR because we think non-consensual spanking can be justified (at least morally and artistically) by the spankee's actions, especially when the intention is plainly humorous. Carrie's spanking following her careless interference in a boat race would be an example, and The Spirit spanking Diana the Huntress after she tries to kill him would be another one, even clearer in its moral justification. But simply using brute force to spank someone who really hasn't done anything wrong is troubling, and all the more so on top of actions like forcibly groping her, which not infrequently happened to Carrie. Sometimes she deserves her spankings, and sometimes she doesn't - but she never deserved to be groped against her will. We have to wonder if any readers raised this point with the Mayfair editors at the time. Was the writer, David Brenner, too obtuse to grasp the implications of what he was doing? Or was British culture already so far down the road to the violent hooliganism that prevails there today that nobody thought there was anything wrong with this?
