Chicago Spanking Review

Weird Spankings #6 - The Punisher Punishes by Spanking

---> Comics Gallery 2

Some years back we introduced our readers to The Paddler. As we mentioned there, he was a pornographic parody of The Punisher, who himself now becomes the subject of this entry in our series "The Weirdest Comic-Book Spankings of All Time". The Punisher is one of those pathologically violent characters (like Marvel's Wolverine and DC's Lobo) who became disturbingly popular in comics during the 1980's. Interestingly, Lobo appears to have started out as a savage indictment of the ultra-violent Punisher and Wolverine, but the comic-buying public took him at face value and made him a star - like we said, disturbing.

Comparison of The Punisher

and The Paddler (© Marvel Comics Inc. and Friendly Comics, Inc.)

Art by Dave Simons. Note especially the "apple for teacher" with the lighted fuse, and the title of the classic novel on the desk. The Punisher is © Marvel Comics Inc. Posted by the Web-Ed on 01/21/2010

Now, The Punisher never punished anyone with an implement milder than an automatic rifle, but of course his very name invited parodies in which he couldn't or wouldn't employ lethal weapons, with The Paddler being a rather obvious example. Another example we found is this dandy little alternate earth scenario in which The Punisher never used guns, so he "forced the criminals that he stopped to write sentences on a blackboard, sit in the corner with a dunce hat on, and he even spanked one of them, threatening to take away television for a week." Art and story by Dave Simon, attributed to What If? #7 (2nd series, December, 1989), although we have our doubts about this because that issue featured (by coincidence) Wolverine on the cover and because What If did not normally feature parodies. Technically, if the panel didn't come from a Marvel comic, it doesn't qualify for this series, which is restricted to spanking from actual comic books, but we'll let it slide because it's so much fun and because we have another Punisher example below anyway.

Art by Jon Bogdanove. © Marvel Comics Inc.

Next we see a situation very similar to the previous one, in which The Punisher deals with various street toughs by spanking them (note the two punks running up the stairs rubbing their sore backsides). The spankee is a worn-out looking, wizened little fellow - about twenty-three. But that's what the "punk" lifestyle will do for you.

At first we believed this might be an example of "unofficial" comic art (where the legal author is not the copyright holder, as with many of the items in this gallery), but the print quality strongly suggested it was from an actual comic book. After researching various data bases, we think it may be from What The--? #1 (1988): "Parodies: the Pulverizer (Punisher) stars in 'Accounts Overdrawn--Checks Returned For Lack of Funds.' Script by Peter Gillis, co-plot and pencils by Hilary Barta, inks by John Severin." Jon Bogdanove, who certainly drew the spanking panel, is credited elsewhere in this issue, which makes us wonder if we're close but incorrect, especially since the signed art is dated 1989. At any rate, this is as close as we can come to a positive identification for now.

While we enjoy the humor in these two situations, which we must admit derives mainly from the incongruity of having hardened criminals punished by spanking, we still can't help wishing that The Punisher had chosen to punish any one of Marvel's many villainesses instead. Oh well.