Clues That Tell Us an Artist Might Be Into Spanking

Spanking cartoons in the Humorama Digests and other men's magazines.
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Clues That Tell Us an Artist Might Be Into Spanking

Post by web-ed »

This topic was really started by Phil over on the CSR Feedback Forum under the"Weekly Updates" topic, and I decided it was important enough to merit its own separate discussion. Here is what Phil had to say:
overbarrel49 wrote: i realize this didn't start out to be a spanking drawing but i'm going to use the opportunity to make a general observation anyway. we often speculate if the artists who have done spanking drawings in the magazines, especially Humorama, actually have any spanking interest. i have a general observation which might be helpful in some cases. it seems to me that men who are into spanking are generally less interested in breasts than the average male, concentrating more on the bottoms. i have also noticed that girls who like to have their breasts touched and played with are generally not interested in spanking either and the reverse too..............if they like their bottoms to get most of the attention, they are more open to getting a spanking. some of the artists who did spanking drawings have had a tendency to draw big breasts, sometimes in the extreme, at least at some point in their careers. i would say that these artists probably have little interest in spanking even though they may have done some spanking drawings. i'm going to be keeping my eyes open from now on to see how these artists portray the bottoms being spanked.................whether they take the time to make them nicely rounded and spankable or if it seems more of an after thought. anyone else got any theories or observations about this?
I've long suspected the same thing - in fact, I was going to call attention to Kirk Stiles' emphasis on the bosom in a future article (no one really needs to point it out in Bill Ward's case!). I know that if I were an artist drawing a spanking scene, I'd certainly lavish a lot of attention on the spankee's behind to make sure it was as spankable as possible. And our three Resident Artists, Dan, Phil, and b00m, certainly don't stint when it comes to presenting the female posterior! So let's start by taking a cursory look at the Humorama "Big Five" plus George Morrice, who got left out of the "five" because at the time I coined the term I didn't realize how many "spankers" he had done.

Bill Ward requires little comment - although in his 40's and 50's art his women had reasonably normal proportions, he later became so completely boob-crazy it really harmed his work. And despite the fact he drew more spanking cartoons than any of the others, we may well doubt that he was into the scene himself.

Bill Wenzel and Homer Provence both seem to balance their interests in busts and behinds, but from opposite ends of the scale, so to speak, with Homer drawing women of overall slender builds and slightly larger than average busts, and Wenzel endowing his females with equally-generous proportions everywhere. It's hard to say if either man could have been into spanking - Wenzel probably invented the spanking cartoon, and Homer showed a distinct tendency to portray a consensual spanking which gives pleasure to both spanker and spankee. But Wenzel's invention of the "spanker" may simply have been due to his overall facility as a gag man, while Homer's rather sweet scenes could have been a projection of an idealized spanking in his mind without indicating a true spankophile's interest. I'm inclined to believe that Homer looked upon spanking as simply another kind of sexual foreplay, which in fact is how some non-spanko couples who do spank view this activity.

George Morrice clearly de-emphasizes the bust in favor of the behind, which however he generally clothes in loose-fitting cami-knickers as opposed to Wenzel's hip-hugging dresses. I found three Morrice "spankers" in a single digest (the March 1956 Comedy) which is probably a record and certainly indicates his interest in this type of cartoon, although it's not quite proof positive because the "spanker" was taking off in popularity then and he might just have been trying to please Abe Goodman.

Finally, there's Kirk Stiles, whose maddening inconsistency can make generalizations difficult. Still, there is a definite pattern to many of his women, and while he doesn't draw enormous bosoms the way Ward did, he often makes them particularly provocative to the point I have to believe he was personally more interested in them then he was in behinds. Here is an example from his non-spanking work - something about the male character leads me to believe he may have been a self-portrait:
It's not an allergy that's making this guy's hands itch!  From the August 1965 issue of Laugh Riot, but had certainly appeared earlier.
It's not an allergy that's making this guy's hands itch! From the August 1965 issue of Laugh Riot, but had certainly appeared earlier.
kirk_stiles_itchy_fingers_laugh_riot_aug_1965_small.jpg (122.36 KiB) Viewed 8691 times
As I said, provocative! She's not exactly undersized, but unlike Ward Stiles is a bit more subtle, and makes the breasts look very natural - perhaps that's his secret, along with the wasp-waist that made the bust look larger. So Stiles was probably not a spanko, although he certainly seemed to understand that a man might take pleasure in spanking a woman.

Initially, I left out Dan DeCarlo. Like Wenzel, he grants equal emphasis to the bust and behind; like Stiles, he certainly understood that a man might take pleasure in spanking a woman. But I don't believe that he was a true spanko.

The next question to be asked is, can we apply the same reasoning to comic book and strip artists? There are a number that many of us have wondered about, for example Zack Mosley and Roy Crane (Lee Falk is another possibility, but he was a writer). And recently, I've been thinking about Jack Sparling, who did two spankings we know about and who I suspect did one in Sick magazine that was uncredited but certainly done by a true spanko (a paddle with holes was being used!).

Plenty of food here for future thought - and discussion. Good topic, Phil! :)
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Re: Clues That Tell Us an Artist Might Be Into Spanking

Post by hugob00m »

This is an interesting topic, and I'm surprised that no one else has replied yet.

Perhaps an important clue would be the practicality of the position portrayed in the drawing. Using the three resident artists of this group as a starting point... Dan's spankings are always drawn in an OTK position with the spanker's hand used as the only implement. The women are posed in realistic positions with their weight supported by the men's thighs. In Phil's pictures, the women are usually depicted OTK (although not exclusively) and again, the women are balanced across the men's thighs. And, of course, that's how I draw Katie when she's getting spanked. I always put one thigh of the man under her pelvis, and the other under her the lower part of her ribs. (Since I've exaggerated the length of Katie's legs and the shortness of her torso, I have to draw the men with their knees closer together than they would be in real life, but that's a small concession in my opinion)

I think that the best illustration of this from the world of Humorama is this cartoon by Herc Ficklen.
herc 2a.jpg
herc 2a.jpg (52.8 KiB) Viewed 8667 times
The lady is drawn in a perfect OTK position with her weight supported by the man's thighs, and her pretty bottom pointed up towards the man's right hand. In addition to that, Herc shows the other sign of a spanko artist that you brought up first. The lady's posterior is prominently displayed and nicely rounded, whereas, her breasts, although pleasantly large, are not enormous, and are by no means the center of attention.
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Re: Clues That Tell Us an Artist Might Be Into Spanking

Post by overbarrel49 »

web-ed wrote: Plenty of food here for future thought - and discussion. Good topic, Phil! :)
hi web-ed,

thanks for the run down on the humorama artists. Ward was the one i was thinking about the most when i first brought this up............especially after reading some of your observations about how big he drew the breasts in his later years. i was thinking that almost certainly he had little interest in spanking. as you pointed out, it's difficult to say with certainty that any of them had an interest in spanking. still i think some of them can certainly be eliminated...........Ward and Stiles i think. others probably require more study. i don't see any of them doing anything that says to me, "hey, i'm a spanker" but some of the nicely drawn bottoms make me wonder. we'll just have to keep watching :D . thanks, phil
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Re: Clues That Tell Us an Artist Might Be Into Spanking

Post by overbarrel49 »

hugob00m wrote:Perhaps an important clue would be the practicality of the position portrayed in the drawing.
hi Boom,

excellent point and this is probably just as good as an indicator of spanking interest as the portrayal of the bottoms and breasts in the cartoons! just look at how many of the humorama drawings where we've complained about the faulty position and spanking with the wrong hand. that sure does suggest that the artist didn't give much thought to the spanking process.
hugob00m wrote:The lady is drawn in a perfect OTK position with her weight supported by the man's thighs, and her pretty bottom pointed up towards the man's right hand. In addition to that, Herc shows the other sign of a spanko artist that you brought up first. The lady's posterior is prominently displayed and nicely rounded, whereas, her breasts, although pleasantly large, are not enormous, and are by no means the center of attention.
again, excellent point and you chose a great drawing to show this :D . i agree with your comments about this drawing and it seems likely that Herc is into spanking. to take this a step further, the expressions of the participants in this spanking may have been deliberately designed to show the audience just how sexually exciting and how much fun spanking can be. good thoughts Boom. thanks, phil
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Herc and Some Others from Humorama

Post by web-ed »

Three more of Herc's "spankers" are known, two of which have been posted in the Humor Gallery and the third of which is still in my files, to be posted sometime in 2012. Rank Spank is probably the best of these, although I think it's not quite as good as the Cop Spank in b00m's post. b00m's discussion of the OTK position is illuminating, but unfortunately we'll probably never know enough about Herc's personal life to say whether or not he was a spanko.

Another artist of interest is Felix Andrews. He did some cartoons for Humorama but no "spankers" there that I know of. However, he did do a spanking cartoon for Adam, and the position features a leg lock and a turned-up bottom which really makes me wonder. We'll see this one in about a year(!) when I'm finally done with the Humorama Series.

Other Humorama spanking artists who used the OTK position but have yet to make an appearance in the series are Sutton, Wyatt, Riley, Paraschos (no first names yet for these guys), Reamer Keller, Paul Hamilton, Quentin Miller, and "Screwy" Louie Magila. So we'll have to revisit this whole question once the series is completed.
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Re: Clues That Tell Us an Artist Might Be Into Spanking

Post by butch46163@yahoo.com »

HI WEB -ED CSR!!!! Do any one think that mainstream comic artist such as Zack Mosley and comic Writer Lee Falk was into spanking and used it to play out their spanking fantasties such as having Smilin Jack spank both a mother and grown daughter and the Phantom giving spankings to Queens and bad females in plenty of his comics :D This seem like to me what a person that is into spanking might do to peek their sexual interest without letting the readers know that they was into this kind of thing especially in a mainstream comic which is read by younger people.Just like I believe the artist of Wonder Wonan was into bondage and female domination and used it in his comics but that another topic :lol: Artist such as Ward and Decarlo who also might have been spankos drew most of their spanking arts in men magazines using it as humor but in realailty was a way for them to express their kink and fantasies Boss spanking secretaries husband spanking wivies or Doctors spanking Nurses :lol: Maybe Iam wrong but to me these artist was into spanking and used it in their works to satified their means and without the readers knowing that why it strange that both Ward and Decarlo never had their female characters spanked in plenty of their comic although Decarlo did have Veronica Betty and Josie spank but Ward`s Torchy wasnt :cry: Maybe they didn`t want their bosses to know they like drawing women being spank :?: And that to me is a true sign of a spanko
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Re: Ward, DeCarlo, Mosley, and Falk

Post by web-ed »

Hey Butch,

Here's a quick rundown on the guys you mentioned - not an exhaustive analysis because I don't have the time here.
  1. Zack Mosley - Dan Rivera is already on record as subscribing to the theory that Zack was one of us. The primary evidence supporting this proposition is the (at least) 8 spankings(!) in Smilin' Jack. Also, the spankings are good and hard! I haven't made up my mind yet because I'm troubled by the awkward OTK positioning (this was b00m's point above - that the "practicality of the position" should be considered an important clue). I'd have to say the jury is still out on this, but Mosley is a distinct possibility.
  2. Lee Falk - Nobody scripted a better "comeuppance" type spanking in which the highborn, haughty female gets well and truly humbled, than Falk - not even Jerry Siegel in the Superman strip. The question then becomes, can a man really love this kind of spanking scene as much as Falk obviously did and yet not be a spanko? I'm inclined to say no, but we still have to consider the possibility that it was a combination of old-fashioned masculinity and sheer writing craft that led to the vividness of these scenes. I'll score Falk as a "probable".
  3. Ward and DeCarlo - I'll throw these two together even though they were very different artists because they are the only members of the "Big Five" (the others being Wenzel, Stiles, and Homer) who had extensive careers in comics. Based on my researches this past year, there is good reason to believe that the Humorama "spanker" was invented by Bill Wenzel, and that the vast majority of the 165 known cartoons were first published between 1955 and 1963. This suggests that the editor, Abe Goodman, demanded a lot of "spankers" from the artists who submitted to him, and that's the reason they did so many rather than actually being spankos themselves. Ward may have harbored hostility toward women which possibly means he saw spanking in purely sadistic terms, whereas to true spankos like ourselves something much more is involved. DeCarlo clearly understood spanking for pleasure, but may not have experienced it himself, and even if he did it wouldn't prove that he was a true spanko. (Remember that some non-spankos do learn to enjoy spanking. If that sounds like a contradiction, it's really a matter of definitions that we'll have to go into another time).

    You also mentioned their comics work:
    butch wrote:...strange that both Ward and DeCarlo never had their female characters spanked in plenty of their comics although DeCarlo did have Veronica, Betty, and Josie spanked but Ward`s Torchy wasn't
    Even if they had been spankos, remember that most comics were produced using the "script first" method. (Even the later "Marvel method" from the 60's on has a more or less complete plot given to the artist as a starting point, but that's too complicated to get into right now). Unless Ward did his own scripts (very unlikely, but then again there's a lot we don't know about Ward's comic work in the 40's and 50's), neither man would have had the opportunity to inject a spanking scene into the middle of a writer's plot that didn't call for one. So the lack of spankings in their comics work doesn't constitute evidence one way or the other. I think the probability is that neither man was a spanko, but that DeCarlo may possibly have enjoyed giving a few spankings during his lifetime.
-- Web-Ed
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