The cover of JEM (March, 1965). "Washington's New Lobby - Legalize Wife Spanking" it promises.
A few years ago we embarked upon a search of men's magazines of the past but we never got around to presenting our results. While we're not going to begin the necessary series/specials just yet, we are ready to present the one item which was not exactly a new discovery but rather the positive identification of an illustration that had been floating around on the internet. In fact, we thought perhaps our own HugoB00m had once posted it over on the Bulletin Board, and we were right: it was in New Toons (?) to Ponder. Anyway, the artist is Bill Wenzel, familiar to CSR readers because of all his spanking cartoons for Humorama, the magazine is JEM, and the reason for the spanking is a fictional story about a movement to legalize wife spanking. That story appears in full below, but first let's take a look at the cover of JEM magazine and then Wenzel's illustration from March, 1965:
"Let's Legalize Wife Spanking" - sounds like a capital idea to us! From the former collection of and posted by the Web-Ed on 03/31/2023.
Wenzel's illustration is very much in the style of his later cartoons within Humorama's "classic" period, say 1957-60. We see the ink wash (with monochrome tint like the Humorama covers used), the clingy dress, and the spankee's ample bottom. Knowing this to be his work even though he's uncredited for some reason, and suspecting that two of his "spankers" we have catalogued as coming from Humorama probably didn't (namely Secretary Spanking #5 and Spanking Sound Effects we have to wonder if there are any more Wenzel spanking illustrations in magazines of this period. As an aside, did JEM's editor choose Wenzel for this assignment because he had seen the cartoonist's work at Humorama?
Now on to the story which is worth a mention if for no other reason than a spanking does take place in it! The writer is one Edgar Noble, and he had a noble notion, namely a supposed interview with the head of a lobbying group working to legalize wife-spanking called Males Over All. During the course of the interview, the leader, Stanley Slaunders (why not just "Saunders"?) spanks his secretary-wife. (Sounds like Noble as well as the editor had seen a few of Humorama's secretary spanking cartoons!) Noble does make a mistake in first having Slaunders state that his two marriages went "down the drain" before introducing Prudence as his secretary-wife. We find it interesting that Noble had Slaunders receiving mail from supposedly irate women who engage in classic bratting like sending in photos of their bare bottoms and taunting him with "Would you like to spank me?" Clearly, these women were badly in need of some OTK anti-bratting therapy!
First page of the story (click to increase in size).
"A whacking-good idea" indeed! Second page of the story (click to increase in size).
