Chicago Spanking Review

Chicago Spanking Review Comics Page 2 - The Phantom Spanks Queen Pera #1

Comics Gallery 2

© King Features Syndicate. Moved by the Web-Ed on 04/29/2011.

As part of "Focus on The Phantom" week (04/29/2011), we moved this spanking over here from Comics Gallery 1 where it had been combined with two other scenes. Our thinking is that separate and distinct spankings generally deserve separate pages. The strip excerpt we see at left has not been changed, but our accompanying remarks have been extensively revised, and we have also added some new scans below.

Though he used his right hand when spanking that bad girl in Algiers, this time the Phantom switches hands, spanking Queen Pera left-handed. We get two nice spanking panels here, first as Pera is positioned in the center affording us a fine view of her raised rear end, second with a more usual side view.

This sequence is noticeably similar to Evad spanking Queen Arda in the Superman color strip but probably appeared some months earlier. They have a common theme - the high-born, haughty, and arrogant female, represented by a Queen who needs to receive her comeuppance. And since the essence of spanking is humiliation, there's no better way to accomplish this than by turning her OTK. Lee Falk, who created and wrote The Phantom, understood that and excelled at this kind of scene, giving us at least five involving this character (seven if you count two that take place off-panel) and two in Mandrake the Magician.

The excerpt above, which has appeared on several spanking sites besides CSR, was originally provided by Dan Rivera. It was the only version of the Phantom/Queen Pera spanking that has been available until now. We recently determined that this scene is from "Queen Pera the Perfect" which appeared in The Phantom's Sunday continuity from 12/09/1945 to 03/17/1946 (S014) and obtained a new scan of the page that appeared on February 10, 1946:

Script by Lee Falk; art by Ray Moore. © King Features Syndicate.

Here is the final panel of the page above again followed by the continuation in a second spanking panel. This time, we get to see the that the caption "And before the horrified eyes of the court" was continued, "Queen Pera receives her first spanking--" (02/17). The OTK positioning is very good in both panels: Pera is well bent-over The Phantom's knee and firmly held in place, and as we noted above we have a nice view of the target to which the Phantom is firmly applying his hand. We also get three nice exclamations of "Ow!" by Pera, so we know she's feeling the sting! Finally, the crown falling off Pera's head during the spanking was almost certainly intended to symbolize her getting taken down a peg, and was a very nice touch by Falk or Moore.

"Queen Pera receives her first spanking" - and long overdue it was!