Posted by the Web-Ed on 07/02/2010

For the last entry in our Bill Ward blowout, we have what appears to be a cartoon from Ward's late period, found at Spanking Art Blog. Most unusual for him is the holding ankles position (with bondage, but that doesn't change the essentials). Ward renders the position well enough, but then once again sabotages his own work by using what appears to be a stinging nettle instead of a nice paddle, strap, or cane. He has also started to become what we have elsewhere called "boob crazy", although he was to become even more extreme as the years went on.

Because Ward is both extremely well-known and extremely popular, our criticism of his work may surprise some readers. But the critic has to follow his own judgment regardless of popular trends, and we believe Ward's work showed a definite decline over the years. Of course no artist can or should do the same thing over and over, but we think a few examples will illustrate our point and suggest some alternate paths Ward could have followed.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of two Ward spankings, the first from his early period (1950's) and the second from (we think) his later years. The first has warmth and charm - two nice people enjoying a good spanking. The second is rough, crude, carelessly composed with the wrong hand doing the spanking, and with a spanker whose appearance borders on the sub-human. They look like they were done by two different artists, which in a sense they were.

So, what else could Ward have done? Well, remember that before moving over to cartoons, first for the men's humor digests and later for every kind of fetish publication, he had begun his career in comics. Let's take a look at an example of his best-known comics work - Torchy.

Art by Bill Ward (or possibly Gill Fox).

Art by Dan DeCarlo. The boy bears a suspicious resemblance to Archie Andrews, while the banner at the top is priceless: "52 GAY PAGES"!

Torchy was fine work, easily as well-drawn and sexy as any of Dan DeCarlo's non-Archie comics art (see above). Ward's females in the strip were idealized, but their proportions were not unrealistically or bizarrely exaggerated. Wouldn't you like to see Torchy Todd get spanked? We can't help wishing Ward had done his spanking stuff in this style - with a little more care and attention to proper positioning, it would have been far more erotic than what he actually did.

Art by Bill Ward.

Torchy Todd touches her toes - the only thing missing is a nice paddle.