One of Sweetspot's favorite research activities is to take a clue, such as a vague memory, that a given comic strip contained a spanking, and then to go dig it up out of newspaper archives. That's what happened this time: back in 2012 Tanner recalled a spanking in the Lancelot strip. Tanner remembered the details except for the exact date, which we now know was February 13, 1972. Lance and Lori are a young couple, which is really all the background information we need to understand what's going on here.
Here are Sweetspot's comments on finding this scene:
"Nothing gives me more satisfaction than to be able to find a long missing strip for a friend of CSR. This one took a lot of effort. Like you said back in 2015 the word 'Lancelot' turned up too much information (like 100,000 hits) and the byline didn't help either in this case. A Sunday comic is the hardest to find because the title box script often can't be scanned by the computer. Anyway I got lucky with a couple of key words - in this case Lance and father. I got to say this particular panel didn't disappoint. My excitement in finding this was like a stamp collector or bird watcher making a rare discovery - I just about jumped out of my chair. "
Lance spanks Lori after being compared unfavorably to her father. Written by Frank Ridgeway (using the pseudonym "Penn"), art by Paul Coker Jr. Scan by Sweetspot. Posted by the Web-Ed on 06/23/2017 (click to increase in size). © NEA
Lancelot wasn't around very long, the years being 1970-72. What happened to it is not clear as there is comparatively little information available about the strip. It seems to have been pretty inoffensive, the humor sometimes revolving around Lori's romantic expectations as we saw in the spanking episode as well as the one below in which she wants Lance to read poetry to her. Perhaps the romantic problems of young marrieds was too much out of the 50's, too familar by 1972 to continue to hold the interest of a new generation of readers. The short run makes it probable that this spanking was the only one to occur in the strip.
The original art from Lancelot, June 16, 1970, now in a private collection. Evidently Lance's idea of poetry differs from Lori's. © NEA.
Frank Ridgeway was both an artist and a writer (why he used the pen name "Penn" for his writing on Lancelot is not known). He studied at the Art Students League in New York as well as at the School of Visual Arts. He was a storyman in the animation field and created the newspaper strip Mr. Abernathy with artist Ralston Jones in 1957. Ridgeway scripted and Jones drew the strip until Jones' resignation in 1980, after which Ridgeway both wrote and drew the strip until his death in 1994. The spanking episode here was presumably his, and is the only one he did as far as we know.
The spanking panel with the speech balloon removed by Web-Ed. © NEA.
Let's take a look at the spanking panel. The OTK position is pretty good, and the artist, Paul Coker Jr., demonstrates how effective simplicity can be, especially with humor. He gets across the emotions here with very few lines. Other than that his style is hard to describe. We would say his figures have no stiffness at all to them; it looks like their limbs could bend at any point, not just at their joints. As we have observed many times at the past, humor and eroticism stand at opposite poles in art, and so one thing Coker's style is not is erotic.
Coker (born 1924) has enjoyed a long career going back to the mid-50's when his work started appearing in greeting cards and magazines. Coker had a second newspaper strip, Horace and Buggy, with writer Duck Edwing, but is probably best known for his work in Mad magazine going back to 1962. Below is a sample of his unlettered art from an old issue of Mad.
The original art by Paul Coker Jr. from a MAD magazine feature that was titled something like "Second Opinions", now in a private collection. © EC Comics Inc. / Warner Communications
We actually remember "Second Opinions" (or whatever it was called) and probably have it in our MAD collection from the 70's, but because it doesn't have a spanking it isn't worth worrying about what exact issue it appeared in. The structure for each gag was, "If you think such-and-such, then get a second opinion".
In the case of the first two panels, the gag ran something like "If your wife says that your son's girlfriend seems to have nothing going for her, have a man-to-man talk with your son to get a second opinion." Yes, it's just a big bust joke, but see how effectively Coker does the expressions, especially on the father and son.
We don't know of any other spankings drawn by Coker either in Horace and Buggy or in MAD, but that doesn't mean there aren't any.
