Chicago Spanking Review

Combat Casey War Comic Spanking

Comics Gallery 2

Combat Casey #7 (March 1953 - Web-Ed's collection). Cover art by Joe Maneely. © Marvel Comics Inc. (Atlas). Posted by the Web-Ed on 03/18/2011.

Meet our lovely spankee, Torchy Finnegan! Art by Robert Q. Sale. © Marvel Comics Inc.

Because they generally featured tales of all-male combat units, war comics, which began to take hold during the Korean War, are an unlikely source of spankings. Only two are known at the present time, but they are both excellent. The second, from DC's Our Army At War, we posted last year. The first scene, which we see now, dates from 1953 when war comics had just become popular. Martin Goodman's Atlas Comics (later Marvel) always had a "jump on the bandwagon" publishing philosophy - wait to see what's selling for other publishers and then get in on the action. Combat Casey didn't show up until after EC's Two-Fisted Tales (1950) and Frontline Combat (1951) had already become successful. (Edited by Harvey Kurtzman, they were also some of the finest American comics ever published, by the way - for a brief sample, see the page on Little Annie Fanny - yes, we said Little Annie Fanny!).

Most of page 3. Note Torchy's impudence and defiant attitude - she's asking for it! © Marvel Comics Inc.

The cover, featuring Combat with his M-1 rifle and hand grenade, gives no hint of the spanking inside. As you can see, Robert Q. Sale (Siegel), who couldn't have had much practice drawing women in Combat Casey, obviously hadn't forgotten how! His Torchy Finnegan is an absolute knockout with a beautiful face and very curvy figure. We don't want to digress too far, but we should point out that there are basically two approaches to eroticism in comics art: exaggerate the anatomy, often to a ridiculous extent, or subtly emphasize aspects of the human figure while maintaining basically correct though somewhat idealized proportions. The latter approach is more difficult but also more effective, and Sale uses it here with both Torchy and Casey, taking it right to the edge but never falling over. Thus Casey is so virile and muscular he almost makes Jack Kirby's better-known Sergeant Fury look puny by comparison, while Torchy's shapely legs, bust, and behind are plainly visible underneath the notoriously unflattering army uniform. See for example in page 3 above, her legs in panel 2 and her bottom in panel 4.

Haven't fallen asleep yet? O.K., let's see what led to Combat forgetting about combat long enough to give her a spanking!

The story by Hank Chapman is fairly simple: A correspondent, Torchy, is doing a photo story on Casey accompanied on patrol by Casey's brother-in-arms Penny. But she repeatedly gets in the way, endangering herself as well as Casey and Penny, and on top of that, she gives Casey a hard time about his beard! Casey is forced to shoot several enemy soldiers who have moved in close to her, and she mouths off to him yet again! There's only one way to deal with a provocative, headstrong female like Torchy...!

The complete page 4. Torchy finds it a mite difficult to sit down after being taken over Casey's knee. Notice that she's still feeling the sting even two panels later! © Marvel Comics Inc.

As Casey lays on the spanks with gusto, Torchy kicks so hard her shoe flies off - she must really be feeling the sting! © Marvel Comics Inc.

Sale does an excellent job on the all-important spanking panel. It's well-composed with good OTK positioning and believable expressions as Casey torches Torchy's behind!

On top of that, the highly sexualized figures of both Casey and Torchy contribute a lot to the overall effect, with the shirtless, masculine Casey bringing down his huge hand on the feminine Torchy's soft, round bottom. Fredric Wertham, who raised such a stink over Frontier Romances #1 would have really hit the ceiling if he had seen this one - an "erotic spanking" indeed!

Our only reservation is that because Sale depends largely on strong straight lines to get his effects, Torchy's "round" bottom has a rather square-shaped line to it - in this panel only! If the viewing angle had only been a little more to the left this might not have been a problem, for as we have noted above, in most of the other panels Sale gives Torchy a good round behind which he emphasizes rather nicely.

You may find this hard to believe, but we have yet more to say on the fascinating subject of Torchy's rear end! You'll notice in this modification by Spiritworks that he did retouch her bottom slightly - he couldn't change the square-shaped line without altering the viewing angle, which would have required redrawing both figures, so he did the only thing he could and with a very short pen stroke lent her bottom just a little more emphasis (follow a vertical line straight down below Casey's armpit and you'll see this). This means we're not the only ones who noticed that Torchy's buttocks could have used a little more definition in the spanking panel. (We'll bet Funbun would agree also, if he's ever seen this panel).

Spiritworks also modified Torchy's expression and hiked her skirt to reveal a little more leg (Dan Rivera would surely approve of this!).

Spiritworks here seems only to have done some recoloring when he revisited this scene as part of his "Bad Girl Series".

Here's a montage of the key panels, from Spiritworks. Torchy gets her bottom torched one more time!

10/07/2011 Update: Pablo was kind enough to send us two modified versions of the spanking panel. As he explains, he suggests Casey has bared Torchy's bottom (using a combat knife) which he rounded considerably, and he altered her expression and hair. Because Sale didn't make Torchy as round in the spanking panel as she was elsewhere, and because of course he couldn't draw her with a bare behind back in 1953 (even the new Playboy magazine didn't feature bare bottoms yet), these are fundamental changes that we think add a great deal to the already considerable eroticism of the panel.

Modified by Pablo. (Click to increase in size.)

Here is the second version. There are only very minor changes to Torchy's bare bottom compared to the first one, but her face and hair have been altered considerably.

Modified by Pablo. Torchy's fanny is really on fire now!