Humorama History

Spanking cartoons in the Humorama Digests and other men's magazines.
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web-ed
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Humorama History

Post by web-ed »

I decided to create this topic so I could share the current state of my knowledge about the fascinating questions surrounding Humorama and its 210 (at this writing) spanking cartoons without having to write new articles on the main site. Since the Humorama Series was temporarily ended this past August, I have not been idle but have continued my researches, with great difficulty because Humorama has suddenly become "hot" and I'm competing for back issues with people who have a lot more money than I do (almost none since most of my income these days comes from liquidating my magazine collection). Nontheless, more digests and particularly more full-sized magazines have come into my hands, including some magazines which were in such mint condition I suspect they were actually Humorama's own file copies - what a piece of history for my collection, except I'll probably be forced to sell them.

Here are some interesting tentative conclusions I have reached. I may have mentioned a few of them elsewhere.
  • The period in which the "classic" Humorama cartoons was published keeps getting shorter. Despite continuing to search through material from 1955, only what I've called the first true "spanker" (Secretary Spanking #26 in the gallery) can be dated to that year, meaning that approximately 200 "spankers" must have been published from 1956 to 1960! What a thrill it must have been to that era's spankos to have 40 of these cartoons published a year for 5 years :) :!:
  • It thus seems there are three critical periods as far as we're concerned: 1956-57, when the spanking cartoons really started getting published in large numbers and were becoming more sophisticated; 1960-61 when the loss of critical personnel (Jack Cole, Dan DeCarlo, Jefferson Machamer, and perhaps others) or more likely economic factors convinced Humorama to go reprint; and 1972-73 when the digests were replaced by full-sized magazines (Popular Jokes already having been published at full-size for 10 years by then) which combined reprints from the classic era (1955-60) with some new material.
  • Bill Ward and Bill Wenzel, both still active in the '70's, produced some new cartoons for Humorama during that decade. So far, six "spankers" by Wenzel are known, of which we've seen five with one only discovered (by me) last month, but oddly I have yet to see any "spankers" by Ward for Humorama during this time, although he seems to have been doing some elsewhere. Obviously I will keep researching Humorama's late period until we know for sure. None of the other "Big Six" cartoonists were still active, although Stanley Rayon may have done some non-spanking cartoons for Humorama also (any "spankers" of his that surface will of course be presented here).
  • I discovered a 2nd spanking posed by live models! Neither of these has been presented on CSR yet, but they will be. This second one was from Humorama's final years, during which there seems to have been a definite tendency to try to boost sales by having at least two spankings in every issue - a fascinating marketing revelation since it shows that spankos were definitely out there in the late 70's looking for this kind of material. :D
  • At the "end" of the Humorama Series, I estimated there were still 10 undiscovered cartoons from the "classic" period out there. To date I have discovered two (possibly three), one by George Morrice and one by an artist whose signature isn't legible and who did another one we've seen, leaving an estimated eight more still out there - I'm looking!
  • There may be a few more "spankers" that first appeared during the 70's. Again, only time will tell.
  • During the late 70's, some "spankers" appeared for a fourth time! Because I designed the Humorama DB to accommodate only three printings of a cartoon, I have been noting 4th appearances in the "Comments" section. I may have to re-engineer the DB in the future to list 4 printings instead of only 3.
I'm hoping we can have a Humorama summer or something like that. We'll see.
-- Web-Ed
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overbarrel49
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Re: Humorama History

Post by overbarrel49 »

hi web=ed,

this is all fascinating information :D ! i guess every business has to keep up with the times in order to stay in business and it looks like Humorama at least attempted to do the same thing. i thought it was interesting about them having 2 spankers in every issue to try to boost business in the final years. that seems especially interesting because of the time period . as i recall, spankings were becoming fewer and farther between in the late 70s. it's nice to know that there were still spankos out there then..............other than me of course...................LOL. thanks for taking time to present this info for us. i'll be watching to see if you have more to say on this as we go along. thanks, phil
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