Chicago Spanking Review Special Series

Rivals of Humorama

#6 - Secretary Spanking #A2

The Wolf Book Mascots, Nick, Zippy, Packy, and Tessie.

Art by A. Cramer. From the June 1955 issue of Wham!. Posted by the Web-Ed on 04/08/2016 (click to double-size).

The fourth entry of our mini-series on the Wolf Books is our second (and last, for now) featuring Wham!. What we have this time is a secretary spanking, a theme familiar we're sure to all CSR readers by now as we have presented 45 previous examples(!) of this most excellent sub-genre of the spanking cartoon. This one is almost identical to Secretary Spanking #32 by Henry Gaines Goodman: a secretary receives a paternal pat on the "back" and wishes it were given just a little higher, although we spankos wouldn't have it any other way!

There's no OTK position, but we mustn't complain about that given the timing: this cartoon was taken from Wham! in June 1955, only one month before Humorama's first spanking cartoon using the OTK position (Secretary Spanking #26). As we will see later in this series, the earliest known spanking cartoon using the OTK position had come out only a few months before, so we couldn't really expect to see an OTK spanking in Wham! at this time, although it would have been nice.

The cartoonist is A. Cramer, who was a frequent contributor to Humorama as well the Wolf Books and other magazines, although he did no other known spanking cartoons. Cramer's style is difficult to describe: it's less "sketchy" than Reamer Keller's, say, and yet it's not exactly realistic either, which means it's not particularly sexy. Perhaps its greatest drawback is that it's not a strong or distinctive style with no particular influence or concern seeming to predominate.

The cover of the June 1955 issue of Wham! (click to double-size). Art probably by George Wolfe.

As we mentioned last time, we want to give CSR readers some idea of the "feel" of the Wolf Books. One difference between them and Humorama is apparent from looking at at the cover of Wham! (June 1955). Whereas Humorama used covers that had a single color in the form of an accent tint, the Wolf line had four-color covers similar to those used on comic books. This gave a better look, but was considerably more expensive. Did it work, as far as drawing in readers? We can't say because we don't have the circulation figures, but although the Wolf books lasted for years they do not seem to have been as successful as Humorama, which was obviously helped by its low pay rates and low costs of production.

As was customary, the mascot appears on the cover. Here it's "Touring Tess" who seems to be missing some of her clothes.

Art by George Wolfe. From an unknown issue of Wham! (click to double-size).

The book's mascot typically appeared in about 20 cartoons. Here's an example featuring Tessie from an unknown issue of Wham! in which the unlikely theme was a scientific convention: Tesssie demonstrates the third dimension.

Like most of the Tessie cartoons, this one is unsigned. After studying a number of them, we concluded that the artist/designer was George Wolfe (1911-1993). Like many of the other Wolf artists, Wolfe occasionally sold to Humorama but was not what we'd call a major presence there. Of the four artists who designed the mascots (Wolfe, Wenzel, Oakes, and Greene) he was probably the second-best and second best-known behind only the able and prolific Wenzel. He actually had his own newpaper strip, Pops, in the 1960's, although we can't say we remember it.

Tessie gets most of her clothes blown off in an explosion. Art by George Wolfe. From the same unknown issue of Wham! as the cartoon above (click to double-size).

Humorama generally avoided vulgarity in its cartoons prior to the 1970's even though there was considerable nudity including bare bottoms (no bare-bottomed spankings, though). As we saw last time, Wolf (or Dearfield) sometimes pushed the boundaries of good taste. In this cartoon, Tessie is put in what was sometimes referred to in the "old days" of the 1970's as a "rude position" - not obscene, but more than a little suggestive and about as much as you could get away with in the 50's. We don't mean to pick on Wolf or whitewash Humorama: as a matter of fact, editor Abe Goodman did print photos of a number of models with their legs spread, but we don't remember seeing any cartoons of the type. (We don't favor that kind of pose ourselves, which is why we haven't posted any of those photos in the "Humorama Models to See More of" topic over on the CSR Forum.)

If you look closely at the upper left-hand corner of the page, you can see "WHAM + ZIP OCT" lettered by hand. It takes no brilliant deduction to surmise that the cartoon might have been slated for an October issue of Wham!, for while Humorama cartoons were marked only on the reverse regarding dates or digest name we have seen other other magazines marked this way on the cartoon side. However, the "ZIP" part is puzzling as Zip!'s mascot was Zippy and a Tessie cartoon would have been out of place there.