......... Chicago Spanking Review - Secretary Spanking #A5

Chicago Spanking Review Special Series

Rivals of Humorama

#19 - Secretary Spanking #A5

boss spanks secretary by louis priscilla

Miss Nolan becomes the first of many secretaries to wind up over her boss's knee in men's humor cartoon. From Good Humor #31 (Winter 1954-55). Discovered by the Web-Ed and posted on 11/04/2016 (click to increase in size).

We end (for now) our Rivals of Humorama series with what is at present the earliest known secretary spanking, a sub-genre of the spanking cartoon well documented at CSR and well known to our readers. It comes from the Winter 1954-55 issue of Good Humor (#31).

This cartoon resembles the later classics from Humorama in certain ways: the office setting, the flimsy excuse for the spanking (she's ten minutes late), the OTK position (which is good), the pulling up of the skirt, the dismayed expression on her face, and the boss's evident satisfaction leading the reader to suspect that he's enjoying giving her the spanking. If it were better rendered, it could have been by Kirk Stiles, Dan DeCarlo, or Bill Wenzel.

Because the art is signed only as "Harley" and because he did very little work at Humorama we can remember, it took a while to identify the artist as Harley Karnes (another example of his work may be found below). Without more samples, it's difficult to discuss his technique in detail. His thick lines remind us a little of Jack O'Brien. From what we see here Karnes was at least a decent cartoonist, and if he actually started a movement by inventing the secretary spanking cartoon - and this is the earliest known adult M/F OTK spanking cartoon of any kind in a men's humor magazine - then all of us aficianados owe Karnes a debt of gratitude. We'll return to the question of primacy later.

[October 2023 Update: an earlier "spanker" has since been discovered from 1948: Secretary Spanking #A6.]

harley karnes jack flynn cartoon from first issue of cartoon humor magazine

This is an apparent joint effort from Harley Karnes and Jack Flynn that appeared in the April 1971 issue of Laugh Digest. (That is, judging from the markings on the original art. We can't confirm this independently because we never had that issue in our collection, but Humorama was generally pretty good in its record-keeping since the editor there needed to know if enough years had gone by to reprint the cartoon, and for all their low rates, they did at least offer reprint fees to the artists.) We're not sure what the gag is, but the cartoon looks all right.

the cover of the spring 1950 issue of cartoon humor magazine

Good Humor #31 (Winter 1954-55). Cover art by Stanley Rayon (click to increase in size).

Let's take a look at our Rival of Humorama this time, Good Humor magazine (full-sized) published by Charlton. In one important respect, namely longevity, Good Humor may have been Humorama's chief rival, for it was around a very long time. We don't have the exact dates, but it appears to have been published from the 40's to at least the 70's. Charlton had their own printing press and as we have discussed when we featured some of their romance comics (For Lovers Only #73 among others) they were a low-cost house that paid very low rates. That may explain why we have never seen any cartoons by Bill Ward or Bill Wenzel in Good Humor. With those two big guns absent, Stanley Rayon seems to us to have been their top artist, and he generally did the covers during this period as he did the one at left. (We discussed Rayon's style recently during this series, incidentally, in the Jack Flynn spanking cartoon, and have seen his two Humorama spanking cartoons in this gallery: Secretary Spanking #12 and Shrink Spank #3). We have examined a dozen more issues of Good Humor but have never found another spanking cartoon, which of course doesn't mean there isn't one. We'll keep looking when we can.

Now we come to the critical timeline question. This is the Winter (i.e. Fall-Spring) 1954-55 issue, which means it probably hit the newsstands around November of 1954. Karnes' spanking cartoon therefore precedes Bill Wenzel's first Secretary Spanking (which is also Humorama's earliest known M/F OTK spanking cartoon) from the July 1955 issue of Comedy by about 6 months, assuming that Comedy probably showed up some time in May. The question naturally arises: did Wenzel see the Karnes cartoon and get the idea for his own from it?

It would seem there was sufficient lead time: as we don't believe Abe Goodman at Humorama left new material lying around the office too long before printing it, Wenzel's cartoon would have had to have been drawn and submitted by the end of March at the latest. That would have been enough time for him to have picked up Good Humor #31, seen the Karnes cartoon, and draw his own based on it. On the other hand, Wenzel may not have bothered reading Good Humor since he wasn't submitting anything to it, and his own cartoon owes nothing to Karnes' except for the humorous notion of a boss spanking his secretary. Wenzel was a good gag man and could easily have come up with the idea on his own. In a way that we'll get into when we write a future article on the history of the humorous spanking cartoon, the time was ripe for a secretary spanking (and how!).

	Previous Entry - #18 - Secretary Spanking #A4
	Next Entry - #20 - El Picaro #24
	Back to HOME page
	Back to HUMOR page