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07/07/2017 update begins: If there's anything worse than getting something wrong when we post a spanking
panel (in this case it was back on 10/05/2008), it's trying to correct it and blowing it a second time -
and without even suspecting anything was wrong! That's what happened here when we hung the label
"Terry Drake" on the very nice spanking panel below, extrapolating a "T" in front of "ERRY" from what
seemed like the strip's title. Let's see where we went wrong, remembering that our "corrections" are
mostly wrong also as we'll learn after we present the spanking:
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Posted by the Web-Ed on 10/05/2008
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From the Kerry Drake comic strip we have an example of what we call "the elegant spanking":
upper-class, well-dressed people engaging in our favorite pastime. The dialogue here is more than a
little forced: "You don't need a flesh-peddler, but a flesh-paddler!" It seems almost clever,
until you think about it. Why would she need a flesh-peddler? She's not in the white-slavery or
baby-selling business, after all (we hope and presume). So the line is merely a set-up to get the
word "paddler" in there somehow. But shortcomings aside, it's still a comic-strip spanking, which
means that in some fundamental way, it's good!
We really goofed when we first posted this. To start with, we got the name of the strip wrong - it's
Kerry Drake, not Terry Drake! No wonder we couldn't out find anything about it. Fortunately,
an alert reader,
Jim C.,
decided to help us out. Here's some of what he had to say:
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"There were actually several spankings or threats in that series. One stand-out was one involving the main
character's brother named LEFTY DRAKE (he is a private detective while his brother is a Police detective) is in a park and this young woman comes
riding on a horse and the horse gets spooked by something and bucks her off. She starts to beat the horse and Lefty comes to
protect the horse and the woman starts cussing him Lefty then takes the woman (named Bootsie Belmont) over to a bench and gives
her a spanking."
[Web-Ed's note: the above was from our first update later that same month. At a later date we found
the scene Jim described and posted it as
Kerry Drake Spanking #1].
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07/07/2017 update continues: So that's how we left things nine years ago. However, there were
two signs something was still very wrong: (1) the spanker was named "Johnnie," which didn't sound like
anyone in the Kerry Drake strip, and (2) the title was lettered below the panel instead
of above it. There were two signs - but we ignored them, or at least didn't know what to do about them.
Along came
Sweetspot
who took up the challenge of finding the details surrounding the spanking. Here is his description of
the search:
"Since 2008 the above panel has been identified at CSR as being Kerry Drake #1. It's pretty
obvious why that's the case since the words ERRY DRAKE appear just below the panel and there's nothing
about the scene that would immediately disqualify it as being from the Drake strip. I wasn't suspicious
that something was wrong the first several times I looked at the panel and read the supplemental
material. But after spending some time tooling around the Drake strip including recently grabbing a
spanking mention from 1947 this "Johnnie" panel being K.D. just didn't feel right. The title,
although sometimes a title is placed below the strip, just didn't seem right - low and out of place.
Additionally, I had never seen these characters and the artwork wasn't in-line with anything I'd seen
in a Drake strip."
"I wanted to find the source, date, authorship, context but still assuming it was a K.D. strip I used
all manner of search words plus Kerry Drake but came up empty-handed. Being suspicious this wasn't a
Drake at all I set out on an all-in Kerry Drake search starting, wisely as it turned out, from the
first Drake strip I had from 1945. Why look at K.D. if I was becoming convinced it wasn't Kerry Drake?
I wanted to get a look at strips that appeared above Kerry Drake. Well I got as far along as May 9, 1946
and found the following:
"Hollywood Johnnie was the post-war creation of writer Renny McEvoy and artist Jim Pabian.
McEvoy was the son [one source says step-son] of novelist and Dixie Dugan creator Joseph Patrick McEvoy.
By the mid 1940s Renny, born in Cleveland and a graduate of Miami of Ohio, had taken over the scripting
of Dixie Dugan from his father and was also a working actor in Hollywood. Pabian also held employment
as an animator whose work included Tom and Jerry cartoons. He also worked for Dell comics in the '40s
and '50s. Our main character is one 'Hollywood' Johnnie Wolfe, an 'actor's agent,' an occupation that
sometimes carried the undignified moniker of 'flesh peddler'."
Sweetspot provided the following scan to introduce the "flesh peddler" lingo:
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11/28/1945 - Hollywood Johnnie, actor's agent or "flesh peddler".
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Sweetspot continued:
"The dialogue from the second spanking panel certainly makes more sense when we understand the context
of McEvoy's word-play. So Johnnie Wolfe, actor's agent and ex-actor himself, is 25 years old
and is said to know everyone in Hollywood but is the loneliest guy in town because of his lack of
self-assurance. He is also a veteran of WWII and fought in the Pacific. On April 7, 1947
Hollywood Johnnie suddenly morphed into Screen Girl about a would-be actress from Ohio.
I can't say for sure if Johnnie ever appeared in the new strip but I know that several of his
co-characters did. Let's run through some of the more pertinent panels that lead up the spanking..."
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05/01/1946 - "Th' old man is a pickle king and she's just a gherkin!" [i.e. "she's just a pickle"
(as we would say in America, "gherkin" being a term more likely used in other parts of the English-speaking
world). Did McEvoy intend to imply that she had gotten Johnnie "into a pickle" by her behavior? Notice
also the word play on "handle" in which it's implied that Johnnie, who's "handling" her as her agent,
would really like to "handle" her with a spanking - a line of thought that's repeated just before he
actually does take her OTK on 05/08! -- Web-Ed]
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05/02/1946 - "I wonder if the O'Dills' are related to the Turkles? [See Slats Spanks Tony Turkle
for the reference - Web-Ed] I think J.W. says her complex is not B-. Mother O'Dill said she always
wanted to be a movie star and is very up front (in more ways than one as you'll see) when it comes to
insisting her daughter pursue a career in film." - Sweetspot
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05/03/1946
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05/04/1945 - "A fight breaks out much to the pleasure of the gloriously well-endowed Mrs. O'Dill, Harriett
has no nose and we see a bothersome streak running down the page of the Syracuse Herald Journal (a
result of their archiving process I would guess) that will continue for days to follow." - Sweetspot
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05/06/1946 - "There's no continuity with the Sunday strip which is simply called 'Hollywood' so we
continue with the story on Monday May 6, 1946. The fight was a publicity stunt. Harriett is so outraged
that her tantrum runs off all the guests including people important to Johnnie's career. One guest
suggests Harriett needs a poke. I don't understand the response of the other female guest as she leaves."
- Sweetspot.
[She may have been hinting that she deserved to be called whatever naughty-name Harriet used - Web-Ed]
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05/07/1946 - "Harriett seemingly has ruined her career before it gets started and disgraced the family name!
Johnnie gets a jump on the Razzies by saying that Harriett deserves an Oscar booby prize. Once again
Mother O'Dill threatens her daughter but is again interrupted." - Sweetspot
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05/08/1946 - Johnnie spanks Harriet O'Dill! And we now know that the spanking panel was repeated - Web-Ed
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05/09/1946 - Strangely, it's Johnnie's hand that is drawn with "pain stars" instead of Harriet's behind, and
he doesn't "feel better" which a man should after spanking a deserving brat, probably because the spanking
hurt him more than it hurt her. We also see the real placement of the "Hollywood Johnnie" and "Kerry Drake"
logos - Web-Ed.
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05/10/1946 - "'I apologize, I've behaved terribly Johnnie.' Harriett isn't particularly interested in
being a movie star. However she is interested in a young man who works for her father at the pickle plant.
He is a writer...Johnnie gets the young man's story sold to a Hollywood studio...the couple gets married...yada,
yada, yada." - Sweetspot
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Scans by Sweetspot taken from the Syracuse Herald Journal, color-balanced by
Web-Ed and posted on 07/07/2017.
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So we now have the whole story and we will update the data base accordingly. The OTK position is nice, but the spanking scene would have been far
more exciting if it had been a tearful Harriet, backside on fire, who apologized to Johnnie. We might
also think about this: if Johnnie had spanked Harriet before the guests had left, he might
have generated the publicity he was going for since we all know how much attention people pay when
a man spanks a woman!
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