The interior spanking panel from Popular Teen-Agers #14 (November 1952). Posted by the Web-Ed
on 02/26/2016.
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02/26/2016 Update: Thanks to the fabulous collection of JVJ, we finally have a complete set of
scans from this book and can answer some of the questions we've had (thanks to JVJ, and Soothsayer, Movielover,
and Novus for creating/editing the scans). First, the date was indeed November, 1952 which is important
for reasons we'll explain in a moment. Second, we can follow the story now, and we include four full
pages below. Two big mysteries remain, however: (1) Is the art partly or completely by Wally Wood, and
(2) Is this book a reprint from several years earlier? (Ripley discovered that much or all of
Star's output was reprint).
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Page 1. We meet our spankee-to-be, Carla Bartley, a self-admitted shrew! Once again we have
the spanking shown on the splash page as well as on an interior page just as we did in
True Brides Experiences #16, a testament to
the dramatic interest of a spanking scene.
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Page 4. A truck driver, Peter McMann, makes his appearance at Carla's father's grocery, having
heard of Carla's shrewish reputation and being determined to tame her. Hmmm - sounds a bit like Petruchio and
Katherine from The Taming of the Shrew, does it not?
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The cover of Strange Worlds #4 (September 1951). Art by Wood - and this isn't even his best!
(Click to increase in size).
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Finally, we return to the questions we asked earlier: (1) Is the art partly or completely by Wally Wood,
and (2) Is the book reprint? In this case it isn't just that we strive to learn as much about the personnel
involved in a comic-book spanking for the sake of completeness, a M/F spanking scene by Wood would be
big news, because he's one of the greatest comic-book artists of all time and is reknowned for drawing
beautiful women. The cover of Strange Worlds #4 (Sept. 1951) gives some idea of what he could do
(for an even better example, see
Doctor Cylon's take on
his character Sally Forth in which we show not only Sally but Wood's art for the cover of
Weird Science #13). On his index card for this issue, JVJ credits the art to Wood, but we're
not convinced - it certainly doesn't look like Wood's pencilling (part of Page 1 reminds us of
Jim Mooney), and he wouldn't have had time to be doing any new work for Star in 1952 as he
was very busy by then at EC and Avon.
On the other hand, Wood excelled at inking and often inked other artists, not so much because he wanted to
as because he needed the money. We read in an interview with one of his assistants many years ago that his
skill with the pen and brush was so great he sometimes inked without pencil guidelines - an unheard-of
procedure back in the old days when pencils had to be inked to be dark enough for the traditional printing
presses. We also know that Wood's early work was lettering, backgrounds, and inking for Fox
romance comics, and we have always suspected that Fox was the source for much if not all of Star's material.
So "I Was a Shrew" could have been published by Fox in the late 40's and then reprinted by Star very
shortly afterward in 1952, strange as that sounds. The only problem is that neither the ol' Web-Ed
nor any other researcher has yet been able to nail any of this down, due largely to the scarcity of Fox
comics. But we'll keep looking as we find this spanking scene, and Star's publishing history, completely
fascinating, and if we ever find the answers you can count on reading about it right here!
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