Chicago Spanking Review Special Series

2011 - A Year of Humorama Spanking Cartoons!

#63 - Morse Code Spanking (I Love You)

From Laugh Riot (August, 1965; Web-Ed's collection. Click to double-size).

Click to double-size.

We knew of this cartoon's existence because JimC remembered it - in fact, it's his favorite. We finally found its first appearance, in the July 1958 Gee-Whiz, and its putative second appearance in the August 1965 Laugh Riot, from which these scans were taken.

This cartoon has all of Homer's characteristic virtues and is in fact one of his best. The spankee is slender, attractive, and quite willing to be spanked. Something only hinted at in his office-setting cartoons, that there is a substantial personal relationship between spanker and spankee, is presented more unamibiguously here - "I know Morse Code, Dear - and I love you, too!"

There is a strange sweetness in this picture of a rather plain-looking, sincere man saying "I love you" to his woman through the medium of a morse code spanking, and it is this more than any aspect of his drawing technique that sets Homer apart from the rest of the Humorama "Big Five".

Ward's only playful spankings are F/F, with his M/F scenes often expressing a great deal of hostility toward the women he seems to have trouble relating to; Wenzel's spankees are generally indifferent (occasionally slightly alarmed); Stiles' are only rarely glad to be taken OTK; and DeCarlo's are generally taken advantage of by men in positions of superior power (the boss, a cop, etc.) for their own and the reader's amusement. Only Homer routinely considered spanking a normal part of a loving relationship, a rather enlightened attitude considering that he was one of Humorama's older artists, already in his forties when the prime period for "spankers" commenced in 1954 or '55.

It's hard to know if Homer intended the picture on the wall behind the couple to be symbolic. The centaur chasing the maiden could be read as an endorsement of hedonism, although we doubt Homer meant it that way. It probably should have been a satyr instead of a centaur in either case, but we'll let any mythological shortcomings slide because of the cartoon's sincerity and sweetness.