Chicago Spanking Review Special Series

The Humorama Spanking Cartoons!

#226 - Frogface Spanking

George Morrice was the third-most prolific spanking cartoonist at Humorama, coming in behind only Bill Ward and Kirk Stiles, and he pretty much covered all the relationships between spanker and spankee we've all come to know and love so well: Boss/Secretary, Psychiatrist/Patient, Customer/Store Clerk (he was the only one who did these), etc. But he seems to have been particularly comfortable with the Husband/Wife spanking, and we'll see what we believe to be a late example of his work in that genre now.

The gag revolves around the husband's apparent habit of referring to his boss as "Frogface"; one day when the boss has been invited to dinner, the wife lets slip the husband's affectionate sobriquet "Frogface". A spanking is surely justified in a case like this!

The OTK positioning is adequate but not great, with the wife's hips elevated some distance above he husband's lap. Morrice makes up for this by presenting her buttocks as a very shapely target (something he usually achieved when he avoided making them too oversized as he sometimes did) and by her expression of discomfiture, so typical of him.

From Snappy, January 1961. Art by George Morrice. (click to increase in size).

From Snappy, January 1961. Art by George Morrice. (click to increase in size).

Above we have two versions of the cartoon taken from different copies of the January 1961 Snappy. This is the oldest printing we know of, which raises an interesting question: since Humorama started going reprint some time in 1961, was there a period early in the year when things continued as they had been in 1960 and they accepted this cartoon from Morrice? 1960 was a year of change and not particularly stable with the publication of several one-shots, the only six issues of Eye, the death of Jefferson Machamer (a long-time contributor but with no known spanking cartoons), and the departures of Kirk Stiles and Dan DeCarlo (two of The Big Six), and probably some other changes as well. If not, when did the cartoon first appear? As of this writing, there are only six known Humorama digests from the "classic" period of 1955-60 that we haven't seen, making it unlikely but not impossible that this cartoon premiered in one of them. And if it didn't and 1961 was indeed the date of its first printing, where and when was the fourth one? Note that putative printings #2 and #3 took place in 1972 and 1974 (see below), strange in and of itself but leaving time for a true #2 between 1962 and 1972 or else a true #4 between 1975 and 1981.

Obviously, we hope to solve this mystery someday.

From Popular Cartoons, April 1972. Art by George Morrice. (click to increase in size).

From Cartoon Parade, April 1974. Art by George Morrice. (click to increase in size). Posted by the Web-Ed on 04/30/2021.