The last out of our series of five spankings from the comic strip Etta Kett is suspiciously similar to the preceding one that had occurred less than a year earlier. Despite this, Etta's mother seems to have forgotten all about it (Etta spanking #4), and also an even earlier spanking (Etta spanking #2). Once again she chides her husband: "You should have thought of it years ago!" to which he responds (exactly as he did before) "Better late than never!"
Etta Kett disobeys her father's instructions and uses his $200 to hire a handsome young lawyer instead of making his bail. He manages to get out of jail by switching places with the young man, and when he gets home, Etta faces a reckoning! Written and drawn by Paul Robinson. Publication date January 26, 1936. Discovered by and scanned by Sweetspot. Edited and posted by the Web-Ed on 08/18/2017 (click to increase in size). © King Features Syndicate.
The spanking panel. Scan by Sweetspot. © King Features Syndicate.
The spanking panel is very similar to the preceding one (#4). Looking at all four paternal spankings, the first two use a lateral view of Etta while the second two employ more of a three-quarter view between from-the-side and head-on. One difference is that this is the only time "pain stars" were used by Paul Robinson to indicate the stinging Etta feels. Compared to spanking #4 there is also a slightly greater degree of bending at Etta's waist due to her right thigh being fully forward and in contact with her father's leg and more of a back arch, which together turn her bottom up to better receive the spanks. This is probably the best of the four paternal spanking panels.
This is the last spanking known in the strip, but with all five having taken place in a period of less than three years, the question of possible additional spankings certainly arises. Here is what Sweetspot, who discovered all five, has to say about it:
"So why would all the spanking action come to a sudden stop after Paul Robinson had previously been using spanking gags year after year? I'm guessing that for one, the joke of Etta getting her comeuppance with a spanking wore thin for Robinson as the decade of the '30s started to wear down. He unfortunately seemed to have a problem coming up with an original gag that would involve spanking Etta and anyway one M/F spanking per year in a strip not named 'Oaky Doaks' is really quite unusual. So the idea of him letting it go for a few years does seem a possibility. But two I think that if Robinson intended to renew Etta's spanking down the line in his strip that notion was spoiled by World War II.
"So Etta joins the war effort with mixed results. She does complain, early after the U.S. enters the war, about how ten of her boyfriends have been drafted but she does her patriotic part and pitches in at one of her dad's factories [The Kett family's wealth varies wildly over the years]. She also did her part in the war by entertaining the troops...lots and lots of troops! I would imagine that after maturing his leading lady this way Robinson found it more difficult to have her spanked like a high-schooler even though in the later years of the strip Etta did indeed find herself back in high-school.
"And three, the strip makes a dramatic change moving from the forties into the 1950's. Etta is no longer to be found in a range of jobs from airline stewardess to movie stand-in or in a long series of broken engagements to be married. Instead she settles down...down and down even further all the way back to high school... One would think that Etta the high school senior would be a good candidate for spanking but as in most of the other pretty-girl teen strips of the second-half of the 20th century that fate is only ever vaguely implied."
Needless to say, despite all these factors making more spankings unlikely Sweetspot and I will continue looking for them!
