Actually, neither Fate nor anyone else ever refers to Tony as "Calamity Jane" in this odd little story, despite what the splash page below says.
Cowgirl Romances #1 (1950, no indicia available). Published by Fiction House.
We mentioned the combination of the Western and Romance genres in comic books when we introduced the spanking in Range Romances #2. Let's see another example now from Cowgirl Romances #1. This was a Fiction House publication that first hit the newsstands sometime in 1949-50. No indicia is available so we don't know the exact date of publication, nor do we have any idea who the creative personnel were. The scans seen here were supplied by Alan, who discovered this spanking and brought it to our attention under circumstances we'll explain in a moment. Thanks to him, we have another CSR exclusive!
We're deeply disturbed whenever we miss something during one of our searches. It doesn't happen very often, and so far, it has only occurred when the spanking takes place in an extremely unusual position, e.g. over-the-horse instead of over-the-knee in Women Outlaws #2. In this case, we did search through this issue a couple of years ago, flashing the page below on screen for two seconds (our usual search interval) but missed the spanking - drat! Let's take a look at the page and see why:
The unknown artist was a man of modest talents who tended to overuse the device of the circular inset. At the bottom of the spanking page he should have used a 1/9-page rectangular panel to show Tex chewing out the ranch hands. That would have left him just enough space to do a one-panel OTK spanking shot. Instead, the inset crowds into the spanking panel, elevating the unimportant (Tex's rugged profile) over the important (the spanking). This layout error made a proper OTK scene impossible, although the writer deserves part of the blame for not allocating more of the page to the spanking and for having Tex use his belt in the standing position instead of taking the spankee over his knee (assuming that was his choice and not the artist's).
Speaking of the writer, while we must give him credit for putting any kind of spanking in the script, he did some strange things apart from probably messing up what could have been a much better spanking. He titled this story "Calamity Jane," a historical figure whose real name was Martha Jane Canary, even though the spankee's name is Tony Tyler! At least he began the next caption by referring to the spanking: "Humilated! Spanked like some naughty schoolchild! And by Tex Barlow, right in front of everyone!"
Here is a close-up of the spanking panel. The spanking was well-motivated with the handsome young Tex trying to protect Tony from her own recklessness, and we can only dream of what might have been had it been better executed. Even as it was, Tony seemed quite taken with Tex, but he ends up marrying Tony's cousin Marcia (there's also a Martha in the story, just to confuse things further). The sheriff is brought in as a last-minute love interest for Tony. And nobody even once refers to Tony as "Calamity Jane" even though the splash page implies this was Tony's nickname! This issue sure could have used some more editing.
Our thanks to Alan, whose keen eye spotted this spanking even in the midst of a bad page layout. We're now more alert to the possibilities of such non-standard spanking positions in comics, and don't believe we've missed any more since this one.
