Chicago Spanking Review Special Series

2011 - A Year of Humorama Spanking Cartoons!

#58 - Secretary Spanking #23

Posted by the Web-Ed on 11/04/2011. (Click to increase in size).

We never get tired of Secretary Spanking, but we must admit there are only a few supportable gags along that particular line: the flimsy excuse (errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation); the affair with the boss (spanking given either by wife for the affair itself or by the boss for letting the wife find out!); etc. - and the old "snare" routine in which the boss tricks her into bending over by way of a semi-plausible request (such as getting something from the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet), then whacks her on the fanny. Indeed, Secretary Spanking #1 by Kirk Stiles was of this type. Here is Bill Ward's nearly-identical version from what was its third appearance, in the June 1968 Gaze, where we recently found it at auction.

As we said, the gag is supportable, but Stiles' positioning is superior, for Ward makes the cardinal mistake of allowing bending at the knees, angling the hips downward. This makes it difficult to reach the target and gives the body a bad line. Two odd things about this cartoon are Miss Howard's face, which borders on the masculine (it's disconcerting once you notice it), and the fact that Ward seems to have left off his signature! It's hard to know why he would have done that since his earliest known "spanker" was from 1956, the year he left comics, which would mean he had no reason to conceal his Humorama work.

Posted by the Web-Ed on 03/30/2012. (Click to increase in size).

03/30/2012 Update: The cartoon's second appearance came only four years later in the June 1960 issue of Romp. We know that by 1961, Humorama had become mostly reprint; what we don't know is the exact date this change took place. Judging by this cartoon, it may have been as early as the summer of 1960. A few more details in the shading are perhaps visible in this one, although we could not do any better at the extreme upper left corner due to the way the digest was stapled.

Posted by the Web-Ed on 11/14/2014. (Click to increase in size).

11/14/2014 Update: We now have a copy of what was certainly the cartoon's original appearance in the August 1956 issue of Joker. The caption is the same as in the later versions.