Art by Ed Dodd. © King Features Syndicate. Posted by the Web-Ed on 09/24/2010.
The second of our two Mark Trail spankings takes place in the forest, which is quite appropriate for a strip that always celebrated the great outdoors. The spanking panel itself is good enough, but the build-up and epilog make it even better, as we'll see below.
It begins when the girl acts up and is told, "What you need is a good spanking!" Now speaking as a Top to all the ladies out there, there is probably no safe response to this statement that you can make ("safe" being defined as one that avoids the spanking), but being the brat she is, she chooses the one response guaranteed to earn her an instant trip over his knee: "What makes you think you're man enough to do it, my friend?" If that weren't enough, in the next day's strip, she makes an open challenge to him which must be answered: "If you think you can, go ahead and spank me!" And answer he does: "Okay, I will!"
The facial expressions are perfect throughout - hers impish and provocative, his confident, happy, and resolute. The best thing about them is that they allow us to see that she wants him to spank her, and that he's very happy to do so. Ed Dodd evidently understood both male and female psychology pretty well, and incidentally knew how to tell a story in the comics medium.
