Chicago Spanking Review

Ella Cinders

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Ella Cinders, created by writer Bill Conselman and artist Charlie Plumb, was an obvious modern-day take on Cinderella, as the name suggests. We have never seen any episodes from its early years, which according to Maurice Horn in his World Encyclopedia of Comics were its best ones, but it did manage to distinguish itself on one occasion which was recently brought to our attention by the artist Collegeboy, who kindly sent this nice-quality scan to us.

Ella Cinders, Sunday February 14, 1943. © United Feature Syndicate. Posted by the Web-Ed on 02/03/2012 (click to double-size) .

Like Cinderella, Ella has a mean stepmother who here gives her a swat with a broom. Neither well-motivated nor well-positioned, this is not a great spanking, and Ma follows it up with a rather rude kick. By the end of this episode, Ella looks like she's ready to turn the tables on Ma, but we don't know that Ella ever actually spanked her. Ella's blood donation to the Red Cross and the mention of the Solomon Islands refer to the ongoing war in the Pacific (this was 1943).

Conselman was dead by the time this story appeared, and we assume it was being ghost-written under Plumb's name but don't know who this writer was. In fact, Plumb may not even have been doing the art any more. Neither Conselman nor Plumb is known for any other comics work. Ella Cinders ran until 1961 with no other known spankings.

05/11/2018 Update: Sweetspot decided to research the aftermath of this scene to see if Ella might possibly have turned the tables on her stepmother. He reports:

"A strip that you've had in the data base and appropriate gallery for quite awhile is the Ella Cinders being smacked and kicked by her step-mother strip. That strip concludes with the possibility that Ella will get immediate revenge against the old battle axe of whom Ella once said, 'Let me out of here and I'll count your chins with a boxing glove.' You pondered the question as to whether or not Ella does a quick turn-around and spanks her. Unfortunately things don't go so well for Ella as the follow-up strip is presented the following week."

Ella Cinders, Sunday February 21, 1943. © United Feature Syndicate. Scan by Sweetspot. Posted by the Web-Ed on 05/11/2018 (click to increase in size) .

Since her stepmother is drawn like a burly man wearing women's clothes, perhaps Ella should have suspected it was her stepmother who had "fighting blood" rather than herself. Still, it was the Red Cross nurse that made the mistake, and Ella would have been perfectly justified in going down there and spanking her !