The Spirit newspaper strip. March 6, 1942, '43, or '44. Posted by the Web-Ed on 05/06/2022 (click to increase in size).
This one was sent to us by our long-time contributor Alan. We hadn't seen it before and were a little surprised to find a M/M spanking in a strip with so many femme fatales (one of whom, Diana the Huntress, did get spanked by The Spirit, and so of course did Ellen Dolan, the Commissioner's daughter in one of the most famous spankings in all of comics). The idea of spanking undersize adult males as if they were boys seems to have been some kind of contagious disease during this era, and we'll say no more about it here nor comment on Commissioner Dolan's declaration that "This gives me a lot of satisfaction!" other than to observe it's only satisfying for us to whack the female rear end.
The Spirit is of course remembered for being the lead feature in a full-color comics insert into the Sunday papers, but he did have a daily strip as well for a short period. Consequently, we can date this rather sorry episode to one of three possible years: 1942, 1943, or 1944.
