We had a microfiche version of this one gathering dust in our files for so long we'd completely forgotten about it until SpankingPanels posted a better version from a high-grade copy of the book. This is the first chronologically of eleven(!) known spankings (so far) in Feature Comics. It's not as good as Rusty Ryan spanking The Viper in issue #132, but it is the best of the Big Top scenes, which isn't saying much as the others are all bad M/M paddlings (a redundancy, since there are no good M/M paddlings).
Feature Comics #34 (July 1940). Published by Quality Comics. Let's hope the New York State Boxing Commission didn't notice just exactly where Doll Man landed that left hook! Posted by the Web-Ed on 02/17/2012 (click to increase in size) .
In fact, what we have here is another intended M/M scene gone "wrong": dressed as a farmer, Butch the Clown is apparently supposed to spank his fellow circus performer Bill, who is playing the part of his wife in drag. Butch however mistakes Hetty McBuff for Bill and spanks her instead. We end up with a stuffy society matron spanking, which is nowhere near as interesting as a sexy socialite spanking, but on the other hand is better than another idiotic M/M paddling.
We've remarked elsewhere that Quality generally did live up to their name. Doll Man, featured on this issue's cover, was a very good strip, and in fact one of the characters that DC continued to use after they acquired the rights to all of Quality's properties in 1956. But Big Top was not - it was pure filler, and pretty much a waste of ink and paper - the kind of thing that appeared when comics were 52 or more pages (this issue was 68) and tried to present a wide variety of material in each issue.
The spanking page from Feature Comics #34 (microfiche). Story and art by Joe Devlin.
The spanking page from Feature Comics #34 (high-quality paper, from SpankingPanels.com). Story and art by Joe Devlin.
12/30/2022 Update: Another version we located somewhere, probably at Digital Comics Museum.
