Chicago Spanking Review

Steve Roper Nips Some Budding Juvenile Delinquency

---> Comics Gallery 2

Steve Roper was a solid adventure strip, following the experiences of a newspaper photographer. This is the first of two known spankings from the strip, reprinted by Eastern Color in 1952 from its newspaper appearance which must have taken place between 1940-50 Riley at SpankingPanels dates it at 1948. [Later confirmed by Sweetspot].

The plot involves Steve investigating a dinosaur sighting with the assistance of young local shutterbug Scuffy McGuffy. He interviews Waters (the villain), who has instructed his niece Mickey to put sugar in Steve's gas tank (actually, the details aren't specified, probably to avoid providing real-life bad guys with "cookbook"-type information that they would misuse, but we're reading within the lines here). Steve spies what looks like a boy trying to mess with his car, and when he sees that Mickey is a girl, he takes appropriate action.

Famous Funnies #203 (December 1952). Published by Eastern Color. Posted by the Web-Ed on 01/21/2011.

The "appropriate action" we mentioned is, of a course, a good spanking! To make it better, he promises Mickey that "this is only a warm up for the hot seat you'll get if you continue this life of crime, little lady!" We love it when the spanker threatens more of the same if the bad girl doesn't behave in the future, and in this case, Steve is fully justified in using this form of correction to set Mickey on the proper path in life.

The complete page 30.

Good OTK positioning.

This scene is a complete refutation of the idea that spanking is necessarily abusive. Steve is administering a modest correction with the express intention of helping Mickey choose the correct path in life, believing that even grown but still-young women can benefit from this kind of instruction. (With older, hardened types, like El Kara or Helga, spanking can serve as just punishment but is unlikely to bring about much in the way of real reform on the part of the miscreant).

This spanking was first discovered by SpankingPanels.com. The scans seen here were obtained by us independently as part of the Great Golden Age Comics Search. The script was almost certainly by Allen Saunders, but we're less certain about the art. It could have been the original artist Elmer Woggon, or it could have been his brother Bill Woggon. Some reports say that Pete Hoffman ghosted the strip later in its run, but it doesn't look like his style to us.

09/14/2018 Update: Sweetspot has confirmed the year was 1948, as suspected. He also took a second look at the Sunday before when he realized something seemed wrong with the sudden jump from the lake to the spanking panel in the May 10 strip, and discovered the spanking had first been shown the day before on May 9. Here is the original version as it appeared in the newspaper strip:

Steve Roper May 9, 1948. Scan by Sweetspot.

The spanking panel from May 9, 1948. Scan by Sweetspot.

Steve Roper May 10, 1948. Scan by Sweetspot.