Chicago Spanking Review

Paddling Fun and Games with The Holliday Girls

---> Comics Gallery 2


It may surprise our readers to learn that although we love paddling, Wonder Woman, and the spankings she gives and receives, we've never really cared for all the paddlings among the Holliday girls that took place in WW's comics. Why? For one thing, as common as sorority paddling fantasies are among spankos, the reality (as is so often the case) falls short of the fantasy, and sorority hazing practices can be quite unpleasant (as we'll see to a certain extent below). For another thing, while some of Charles Moulton's personal kinks can seem almost quaint and charming at times when Wonder Woman herself is involved, here their darker aspects come into relief against the background of semi-willing participants not blessed with super-human powers with which to defend themselves. In brief, there is a dark side to the world of D/S, but we'll say no more about that subject here.

Who are the Holliday girls? They're friends of Wonder Woman, which as you might expect means they're really into spanking. Actually, that's probably why Charles Moulton (William Moulton Marston) brought them into the strip in the first place - when you think about it, a group of college girls aren't really natural supporting characters for a superhero strip, but they can more easily run around spanking each other at the drop of a hat without arousing suspicion than, say, the D.A.R. or some other all-female community organization. And of course, this is the second all-female group that WW pals around with, the first being her sister Amazons on Paradise Island, who do their share of spanking also as we'll see next time.

We decided to consolidate all our Holliday Girls' paddlings into one page, so here they are. The panels below have been taken from multiple sources including DC's Wonder Woman Archives reprint series and The Absorbascon. (The Absorbascon was a device Hawkman and Hawkgirl used to gather all the world's knowledge when they arrived on earth.)

Wonder Woman BL sorority paddling

1. (unknown) Let's go to lunch at the dining hall of "Beeta Lamda" sorority. (We're not sure why Moulton didn't call it Beta Lambda, or given its proclivities, Beat-a Lambda). The punishment for catty, jealous girls? A cat-costume, no food, and swats with a boat oar (at least it looks more like a paddle than those barrel staves Peter usually drew). Most sororities have a president - this one has a "grand mistress of spanks and slams" - hoo-boy! At least they've got their priorities straight. This may not seem too bad by iteself, as perhaps the "jealous cat" is really deserving of some punishment, but it looks worse when considered along with the two scenes that follow.

members paddle and humilate another pledge

From Sensation Comics #3 (March 1942).

2. (Sensation Comics #3) The apparent cruelty in this next panel is slightly redeemed by the context - the "initiate" is in reality a German spy - but we still dislike it because it seems like a set-up designed to rationalize the cruelty of hazing. More defensible is another Beeta Lamda paddling we remember seeing in a WW reprint in the 70's but can't find now - Etta and the girls are testing candidates, one of whom is holding her ankles and receiving a swat. We'll post it here when we locate it. [Found in 2018 - see below].

masked members paddle a pledge

From Sensation Comics #4 (April 1942). Art by Harry Peter. © DC Comics Inc. Posted by the Web-Ed on 01/29/2010

3. (Sensation Comics #4) Much as we like paddling in general, as we mentioned earlier we've always hated hazing practices, which seem to us like an indulgence in cruelty and degradation. Case in point: While stuffing her face, Etta Candy sentences the same girl, Eve, who was paddled in the preceding issue to confinement and more paddling by some hooded characters who are apparently too cowardly to show their faces - and it's back to the barrel stave paddles, by the way. This bunch is so into heavy punishment that they've even got a paddling picture on the wall! Seriously, this is looking more and more twisted. It gives a disturbing glimpse of what life would be like if Moulton's ideas of submission to female authority had actually been put into practice (we briefly discussed those ideas in Wonder Woman Spanks Naha).

masked members paddle a pledge

From Wonder Woman #15 (Winter 1945, Web-Ed's collection). Art by Harry Peter. © DC Comics Inc. Posted by the Web-Ed on 09/27/2013 (click to increase in size).

4. (Wonder Woman #15) - A story called "The Tigeapes of Neptunia" featured the same getting paddled by Etta and her Holliday girls. Bad idea, bad positioning, bad paddles (once again drawn like barrel staves). [Added 09/27/2013]


beeta lamda girls chasing villain with paddles

Here's an item we found after setting up the rest of this page: it seems that not only do the girls of Beeta Lamda paddle each other, they also chase after various villains with cries of "Give him a lamda beta [sic] treatment!" and "Paddles up, sisters!". We don't find paddling bad guys (or preferably bad girls) too troubling in itself, but all the elements together (bizarre villain, wild sorority girls, odd character design) make this scene strange enough to have qualified for the "Weird Spankings" series if we hadn't exempted Wonder Woman from consideration.


beeta lamda sorority hazing candidates with paddles and other methods

Beeta Lambda sorority paddling from Sensation Comics #9 (September 1942). Scan by Michael. © DC Comics Inc. Posted by the Web-Ed on 08/03/2018.

08/03/2018 Update: For many years we tried to find this one which we remembered seeing reprinted about forty years ago in a late-70's issue of Wonder Woman. It was frustrating and strange that it hadn't turned up yet. Then Michael came to the rescue by sending this to us, and much to our chagrin we realized we had it in the DC Archives WW reprints but had somehow missed it. sad face

It's really close to the way we remembered it although we thought there might have been motion lines indicating the paddle was about to find its target. It makes little difference given Harry Peters' rotten layout and rendering. When you have a spanking, it deserves a big panel and to be the point of emphasis in the panel. Peters draws a crappy paddling in a small panel and sticks it way in the background, then further obscures the participants with a figure doing a hand-stand smack-dab in the way mad (which is probably why we didn't see it when scanning the reprint).

close-up of beeta lamda sorority paddling

We tried to remove as much of the extraneous (non-paddling) visual material from the panel but it still isn't a good scene despite the always-interesting hold-your-ankles position. It does count, however, as an honest-to-goodness sorority paddling in the middle of a superhero comic book. Unless we write another sucn scene ourselves, this will probably remain the only time that happened.


[Commentary from 2010 resumes] Maybe this isn't the best time to launch into a criticism of Harry Peter's artwork, but after looking at all these panels, it occurs to us the more we see of it the less we like it. True, no one style can be exclusively "valid", and superhero artwork was generally less sophisticated during this era than it was to become in the 60's, but even so, it's obvious that Peter's work on Wonder Woman cannot compare with Frank Godwin's, much less other contemporary efforts such as Simon & Kirby's Captain America, C. C. Beck's Captain Marvel, Will Eisner's Spirit, or Jack Cole's Plastic Man. His perspective is baffling, his anatomy grotesque (and apparently unintentionally so), and his panels have a cramped feel (in fairness, this last may be Moulton's fault for overwriting). Is Etta Candy of normal height as she appears to be in the "German spy" panel, or is she a deformed gnome who stands about waist-high as she does in the "Dr. Psycho" panels? It's interesting to contemplate what the effect on Wonder Woman would have been if Moulton's stories had been drawn by another artist - would they have lost the odd charm that at least some of them had, or would a more realistic style perhaps have rendered their deviant sexuality even more blatant?


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