Chicago Spanking Review

Roy Lance Spanking

Splash page of Roy Lance from Jungle Comics #2 (February 1940). Published by Fiction House. Posted by the Web-Ed on 11/19/2010.

For the third in our series of newly-discovered spankings, we turn to Fiction House Publications. In fact, we're going to see three more M/F scenes from this publisher, and to be perfectly clear they were already known to SpankingPanels.com before we discovered them independently, but they appear here for the first time on the web.

Fiction House published a lot of jungle-themed comics, and we see here the first appearance of the Roy Lance character and strip from Jungle Comics #2 (February 1940). Roy Lance ran for some time in this book, but this is the only spanking in it yet discovered. The creative personnel are unknown - it's impossible to identify the writers and artists in many of these books since the work was farmed out to the Eisner-Iger studios (and perhaps to other places for all we know).

We meet the main characters on the splash page (at left), although our director-spanker, John Abbott, is mentioned but not pictured because there wasn't room for him.

Abbott wants to make a movie about the African uprising, and he wants Joan, an actress, to star in it. The producer insists in sending experienced guide Roy Lance along on the expedition. And this is where it gets interesting: when Joan meets Roy, she tells him right off, "I'll obey orders implicitly ..."

Did you get that? She's ready to obey his orders, and she hasn't even been spanked yet!!

Note to young men - if you ever meet a girl like this, don't let her get away from you! Most women are not quite so cooperative, believe us.

Below, we have further proof in the caption that Joan is the most submissive spankee we have ever found in a comic book: "A dispute arises as to whom Joan shall obey ..." (that is, John or Roy). Note that the dispute is not about whether Joan will obey, only whom she'll obey - what splendid submissiveness!

Still, general submissiveness is not enough for John, so he spanks her! To no one's great surprise, "the mutiny is quelled."

Examining the spanking panel close up, we see that the OTK positioning is good, with Joan well-bent over, her head up and back arched, although we wish the target area was a little better-defined. Interestingly, there are two witnesses to the spanking, a dog and one of the porters, even though it takes place inside a tent.

Overall, this is a fine scene, and very unusual because Joan's "mutiny" is so meek compared to the stubborn, willful defiance we often see in comic-book spankees. We'll bet that Joan doesn't mind this spanking a bit, and in fact probably would have been content to take a second spanking from Roy!

The cover of Vooda #20 (April 1955, published by Ajax/Farrell/Four Star - click to enlarge).

01/23/2015 update: We were pleasantly surprised to discover that this spanking was reprinted in Vooda #20 (April 1955). Vooda was another of those many jungle girls who unfortunately never got spanked. She makes her debut in this issue, taking over the book which had been known as "Voodoo". Apparenly for legal reasons, the "Roy Lance" title was discarded and the Roy character is now referred to as "Kit" (something similar occurred when the spanking story in The Saint #5 was reprinted in Police Line-Up #1).

There are a lot of unanswered questions - why did Farrell reprint this story in 1955, 15 years after its appearance in Fiction House's Jungle Comics #2? Was Farrell doing mostly reprints like the still-mysterious Star Comics? We think the answer is probably "yes" because Fiction House had ceased publishing comics in 1954 as the Golden Age was coming to an end and some violent shocks to the industry were yet to come in 1956-57 (Farrell hung on until 1958). One of the interesting things about tracking comic-book spankings is that sometimes you accidentally discover something about the medium's publishing history that would otherwise have remained unknown - would anybody have recognized this story after 15 years as a reprint if it didn't have a spanking? Even the Grand Comics Database didn't know (don't worry - we have edit access over there and will fill in some of these details for them).

It should be mentioned that to the best of our knowledge, Fiction House's material was all purchased by Charlton, meaning Farrell had no business republishing it except under license from Charlton. But if they had a license, there would have been no reason to change the "Roy Lance" character, so it does seem like Farrell or someone in their employ was trying to pull a fast one here, unless Iger, whose studio had supplied the material to Fiction House back in 1940 and who is credited as Art Editor here had somehow retained ownership.

For those few who just can't get enough of the history of comics and how it ties into the medium's spanking scenes, we have a bit more to say about the trials and tribulations of this period in The Effect of the Comics Code on Spanking Part 1.

Now let's compare the reprint to the original. We notice right away that in the panel captioned "A dispute arises as to whom Joan shall obey" the original had no dialogue while the reprint does. The next two panels are identical except for "Kit" being substituted for "Roy," while in the spanking panel the native guy is given a line in the reprint: "Tee-Hee! She hollar much loud!" which we think adds to the fun a little. Of course the pages have been completely recolored since the file copy of the original would have been kept after the lettering but before the coloring was done on photostats (today's digital production methods have changed all that).

The spanking panel from Vooda #20. Posted by the Web-Ed on 01/23/2015.

The spanking panel itself is still very good and somewhat clearer than the original because it was taken from a nice paper scan. None of the changes in any way attempt to censor this spanking. It's rather disciplinary, but we think the reason is the timing: in 1955, the Comics Code has gone into effect but Mrs. Guy Percy Trulock had not yet taken over as Code Administrator, which we believe caused the dearth of spankings during the 1956-1965 "dead zone".