As we've mentioned elsewhere, Archie/MLJ's #1 super-hero was The Shield. They did have others, however, and one of them, Black Hood, is the subject of this second entry in our current series of Weird Spankings.
Our story is called "The Case of The Magic Sword" and it appeared in Black Hood #13 (Winter, 1944). The plot makes almost no sense, but Black Hood has run into a magic sword, supposedly Excalibur, and has it with him in his patrol car in his secret identity as a policeman when he interrupts a fur heist. Changing into Black Hood, he confronts the gang and puts the sword to good use:
Art by Al Fagaly, who also drew some adventures of the Archie gang. Published by MLJ (Archie) and posted by the Web-Ed on 04/01/2011.
Having already seen so many examples of M/M spanking for allegedly comedic purposes during the Golden Age, we can only throw up our hands in despair when we keep encountering more, as we did this one during our Great Golden Age Comic-Book Spanking Search. Why do we post these? Most of the time, we don't, as for example in the numerous cases in which a man spanks a boy, but we can't help believing that where a costumed superhero is involved, and a child is not, there is probably someone out there who has a legitimate interest in seeing it if only to better understand GA superhero comics. As for ourselves, it's gotten old mighty fast, although we still sometimes get a sort of grim chuckle out of it, especially if the publisher is DC.
As far as spanking someone with the flat of a sword goes, we think we remember something like this being described by T. H. White in The Once and Future King. It was called "blading", and the guy who screwed up got bent over and whacked with the sword flat. If this is historically accurate, we don't suppose it occurred to anyone back in the 7th century to wonder if a bunch of guys riding around in the woods together (with no women) and "blading" each other might not seem a little gay.
And while we're on the subject of Arthurian Legend, this story made the common mistake of confusing Excalibur with the sword in the stone (the one Arthur pulled out when no one else could to prove he was the rightful king). Black Hood here is the only one who could draw the sword from its scabbard, but at least he did the right thing and returned it to The Lady of the Lake (who had given it to King Arthur in the first place) - once he was done spanking people with it.
