We remarked last time on the "slice of life" character of early American comic strips. As industrialization and the general growth of business started to shift employment from the farm to the factory and office, comics became enamored of the struggles of young women in the workforce. They were still "slice of life" in a way, but American life was changing, and strips such as Tillie the Toiler and Winnie Winkle (significantly subtitled "The Breadwinner") chronicled the office lives of young women. Probably the first of these strips was Somebody's Stenog, familiar to CSR readers from the spanking in Famous Funnies #52 and #60 that we discovered back in 2014.
At the time we certainly wondered if there might be another spanking inSomebody's Stenog, which ran from 1918 to 1941, but we had not found one in Famous Funnies (the only place we believe the strip was reprinted) and so the issue was in doubt until Sweetspot managed to find another in his newspaper archives. This one dates from 1921 and we think it took place earlier than the spanking Cam got from her boss Sam Smithers (we still don't have the date that one was first published). Before seeing it, let's examine an example from earlier that same year just to remind us who the characters are and what the strip looked like. The scans are all by Sweetspot with minor edits from Web-Ed.
Somebody's Stenog, April 23, 1921. © Ledger Syndicate (click to double-size)
In this strip, we see Miss Cam O'Flage and her best friend Mary Doodle enjoying an afternoon
in the country. Interestingly, Mary picks up a stick and mock-threatens to use it as a switch on Cam!
Note Cam's flapper-style wardrobe.
Now let's get to the spanking: Cam apparently expects breakfast in bed, but her strict father is having none of it and puts her over his knee:
Somebody's Stenog December 15, 1921. © Ledger Syndicate (click to double-size).
The spanking panel. Scan by Sweetspot. © Ledger Syndicate. Posted by the Web-Ed on 10/13/2017.
Decent OTK positioning, but we wish Cam were still wearing her "flapper" outfit, and of course she's a little too skinny to make an ideal spankee.
Here are Sweetspot's comments on the scene:
"The Somebody's Stenog spanking is interesting in that Cam is rarely at home as this is much more typically a workplace strip. Of course, perhaps in the early years of the strip her home life could have been more prominent. But this is the only time I recall even seeing her dad. I guess anything for a gag."
"The Queen Elizabeth mentioned may be a reference to Queen Elizabeth I, since, of course, this was decades before Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne and in 1921 the Queen Consort was not named Elizabeth nor was her mother-in-law, and any Queen Elizabeth of that day in any other country would have been too obscure to Americans to make sense as a joke."
