Threats and Missed Opportunities

[Sweetspot]

Here's an interesting variation on the topic at hand of what happens when a grown up daughter leaves her husband and runs home to mother (taken from the 12/19/1963 column of advice-giver Edan Wright).

EdanWrightDecember19,1963.jpg (58.08 KiB) Viewed 3066 times

So in this case it's mom who gets the spanking Note also that Edan Wright commends the husband for using "old-fashioned common sense" in handling the situation - Edan was no Ann Landers

[Sweetspot]

Before we get to far removed from the Jeff Cobb strip let me offer a rather pedestrian threat and a mere mention that took place.

JeffCobbFeb28,1963.jpg (45.68 KiB) Viewed 3061 times

JeffcobbMarch1#2,1963.jpg (38.13 KiB) Viewed 3061 times

[butch46163@yahoo.com]

Nice Find Sweetspot The man should have made his Son in Law Spank his daughter for her bad behavior in front of him and his wife also love the comic strip where the woman have rush back to the Hospital for fear of getting a spanking from her Supervisor wonder was it male or Female I think it Male

[web-ed]

I liked all of these, Phil! Grandpa looked pretty serious about his spanking threat, and "supervisor spank" as he should any tardy nurse! The advice columnist was right on, also.

When I get around to our series on newspaper spankings, I believe I have some mentions of spanking by Ann Landers or Dear Abby to go along with the pile of material you discovered. Maybe we'll do them after we finish up the current Comic Strip Series - and I haven't even calculated when that will be yet!

[hugob00m]

Hi, Sweetspot.

Here's an interesting variation on the topic at hand of what happens when a grown up daughter leaves her husband and runs home to mother (taken from the 12/19/1963 column of advice-giver Edan Wright).
EdanWrightDecember19,1963.jpg
So in this case it's mom who gets the spanking Note also that Edan Wright commends the husband for using "old-fashioned common sense" in handling the situation - Edan was no Ann Landers

Hmmmm! That is an interesting column! No Ann Landers indeed! Landers and her sister Abby used to disparage husbands who spanked their wives, making little or no distinction between a well-deserved disciplinary session and domestic violence!

This mother deserved to be punished for coddling her daughter... but we aren't told if the daughter ever got spanked too. Perhaps her husband picked up a cue from his father-in-law and spanked his young wife as soon as she got back home!

[web-ed]

Flash Gordon is the kind of adventure strip that you can easily picture having a spanking in it - and it did, although Flash wasn't the spanker (see Flash Gordon Spanking #1). No others are known at the present time, but we can't say there aren't any more. If it does have another spanking scene, it would probably run a lot like this threat from September 1, 1942:


Discovered and scanned by Sweetspot. © King Features Syndicate

Familiar setup: a queen misbehaves herself, and right in front of the strong action hero. Could the correct course of action be any more clear? It's spanking time! Flash even says so - yet holds back here for some reason, leaving readers then and now bitterly disappointed.

[web-ed]

Since we're doing the only known spanking from Scorchy Smith this week on the main site, it makes sense to present this threat from the strip at the same time. This was also discovered by Chief of Strip Research Phil Sweetspot .


Scorchy Smith, October 13, 1936. Scan by Phil S. © AP Syndicate

"You're stalling - c'mon, let's have it, or I'll spank you!"

It's a nice, direct threat which unfortunately was not carried out. The artist here is Noel Sickles, who drew no actual spankings as far as we know. It would be front-page news if he had (and of course something may still turn up), for he was the great influence on some of his contemporaries, most notably Milton Caniff.

[Sweetspot]

I've added a different archive to my inventory of sources and I've already gathered a fair amount of interesting, if not, Grade-A material. Let me start by sharing an improved look at the Scorchy Smith threat.

ScorchySmithOctober13,1936Detail.jpg (56.45 KiB) Viewed 2971 times

For some reason I missed the addition of the Flash Gordon threat that Web-Ed placed above. Here's a very similar threat to the same backside given only a few weeks earlier.

FlashGordanAugust12,1942.jpg (26.01 KiB) Viewed 2971 times

FlashGordonAugust12,1942Detail.jpg (58.47 KiB) Viewed 2971 times

[Sweetspot]

Here's an interesting missed opportunity that I'm anxious to share. Candy is probably better known to us at CSR as a several times spanked comic book character but she also starred in her own newspaper strip. I offer this with minimal comment because I'm more interested in hearing what others have to say about it than I am offering my own remarks.

CandyMay19,1948.jpg (66.73 KiB) Viewed 2971 times

[web-ed]

This is a great spanking discussion taking place between two female characters, Phil! Of course teen-age girls would talk about being spanked by their boyfriends, or other girls getting spanked, but her we see Ella Mae actually acting out the spanking. And best of all is Candy's reaction - obviously she would like a masterful boyfriend to spank her, too !

I'm not sure who the artist is here - Harry Sahle started the newspaper strip, no surprise since he did the comic book, but this isn't his style and the the signature here looks like "Lorr," which corresponds to no comics artist I can think of. Perhaps Elmer Groggin was still writing the strip and deserves the credit for the spanking emphasis.

I have completed my search of Candy's own title and can state categorically there are no further spankings in it. However, it's possible although unlikely that she got spanked in some other comic. I don't think there are too many Quality issues from that period that I've missed, but it's possible there are still a few from Police Comics (which strangely enough is where Candy first appeared). The comic strip appears to have begun in 1944, but I don't know when it ended. It would certainly be interesting if there's a spanking (preferably of Candy) in there someplace.

[butch46163@yahoo.com]

could see Beast boy keeping his promise and her runny away escaping a spanking Nice Find

[hugob00m]

Hi, Sweetspot.

I like this, even though the spanking itself isn't shown. The two gossiping girls call the boy a fiend, a bully, and a brute... and end with "Isn't he wonderful?" Definitely some mixed feelings!

[web-ed]

The next Missed Opportunity discovered by Chief Strip Researcher Phil S. that we're going to see comes from Hap Hopper in 1940. The artist is Jack Sparling, whom we have mentioned in the past as a possible spanko. He did two known comic strip spankings (in Mr. Rumbles and Honor Eden) and we suspect him of doing one in Sick magazine (see the Humor Gallery for that one). No actual spanking here, although it may have taken place off-panel (see the third strip). Of some interest is the great satisfaction Babs takes at the thought of Emily getting spanked by her father, and there is no doubt that some women enjoy seeing another woman getting spanked if they feel the spankee deserves it.

Let's take a look:



09/17/1940


09/18/1940


09/25/1940 © United Feature Syndicate

But no spanking from Sparling - why? Well, he didn't write these strips, William Laas (the editor at United Features Syndicate) did, and he unfortunately appears not to have appreciated the drama and interest of a good spanking scene since young Emily certainly deserved one here.

[butch46163@yahoo.com]

Can`t say if there was a spanking but seeing him roll up his sleeve and the look on Emily face suggest a spanking took place off panel! always wonder why in comics Fathers wait until their daughters are grown women to start giving them spanking

[web-ed]

Can`t say if there was a spanking but seeing him roll up his sleeve and the look on Emily face suggest a spanking took place off panel! always wonder why in comics Fathers wait until their daughters are grown women to start giving them spanking

I don't know, Butch, but as Mr. Kett said more than once while spanking his daughter Etta, "Better late than never!"

[Sweetspot]

There aren't very many strips that disappointed me more than this one did by not finishing off the story with a good, on panel, over-the-knee spanking. First of all another spanking drawn by Jack Sparling would have been appreciated. Mostly though it's because the writer teased a spanking was appropriate punishment for this girl over the course of the action. She was guilty of an assortment of misbehavior that included knocking out her dad and putting an innocent man behind bars!

HapHopperSeptember19,1940DETAIL.jpg (63.82 KiB) Viewed 4249 times

I think we can all agree that Emily would have made a delightful sight across any adult male's lap, tears streaking down her face, getting the sound spanking she richly deserved.

HapHopperSeptember11,1940Detail.jpg (60.92 KiB) Viewed 4249 times

[Sweetspot]

As to the remark by Butch about comic strip dads waiting to long to get started on disciplining their daughters with a much needed spanking, well as Web-Ed said we do have the example of Mr. Kett trying to make-up for lost time as regards Etta's rear-end. Jim Jackson Sr. bemoaned the fact that he hadn't spanked his twin teens more often [as do I, by the way].

JacksonTwinsJuly18,1971.jpg (41.45 KiB) Viewed 4248 times

Sometimes he was willing to make-up for lost time.

JacksonTwinsAugust8,1954.jpg (54.43 KiB) Viewed 4248 times

JacksonTwinsAugust8,1954Detail.jpg (61.97 KiB) Viewed 4248 times

[daneldorado]

.
"No! We NEVER allow [our girls] to go downtown wearing shorts!"

Cute line, from your post of a comic strip "The Jackson Twins" ca. 1954, by Dick Brooks.

I'm old enough to remember 1954 fairly well. And my memory tells me that in that postwar era, girls were perfectly free to wear shorts in public, pretty much anywhere they went. There was no scandal involved in seeing young women that way, even while shopping in a store. Perhaps our victory over the Axis powers in 1945 released our tensions and we collectively relaxed about such matters.

Of course I am aware that Dick Brooks, or whoever wrote his scripts for "The Jackson Twins," was simply using the trope of a narrow-minded fusspot ("Mrs. Clubb") for humorous purpose. But even considering this scenario as a real-life event, I see no justification for giving the twins "the paddling of your lives." The girls weren't naked and they weren't in their underwear; they were simply wearing walking shorts, which in 1954 you could see just about anywhere in these United States.

Cheers,
Dan

[web-ed]

I agree the girls didn't deserve a spanking, mainly because they couldn't get back into their house to change clothes, but they sure did for playing the old "twin switch" on either or both of their parents. I will suggest, however, that despite the dialogue the real issue in the first situation may have been that they were wearing swimsuits. Remember that before the bikini, women could wear two-piece suits that looked exactly like what we see here: a brassiere-like top and shorts for a bottom (note that a reader designed the suits worn by Jan and Jill here). We've seen at least two spankings of such delightfully-clad women, in Frontier Romances #1 and Teen-Age Romances #3.

Now the bikini had been around for awhile by 1954, so actually the twins were only wearing the more-modest two-piece with shorts, but perhaps just being swimwear was enough to cause some consternation. Still, Dan's broader point has a lot of merit: although stigmatized nowadays by cultural Marxists as an era of mindless conformity or worse, the 1950's in America was actually an era of artistic dynamism and a continuing liberalization of sexual mores - something I will say more about (if that's possible ) when I finally get around to writing that special on the development of the spanking humor cartoon, which as we all know flowered during that wonderful decade.

[web-ed]

Since we're revisiting Boots on the main site this week, it seems an appropriate time to reveal some of Chief Strip Researcher Phil S.'s other discoveries about this strip. Most significantly for our purposes, he found three other spankings and a character literally asking to be spanked! Let's see what we can of them (and the actual spankings will of course be added to the Data Base).

First, let's meet Pug and her friend (we'll be seeing more of Pug in the above-mentioned update). This is from Nov. 20, 1950:


© Newspaper Enterprise Associates

Four years earlier, this same duo, feeling guilty over something they had done and believing they deserved to be spanked (and being somewhat younger), actually spanked each other, at least to the extent of exchanging swats with a paddle(!) that resulted in the classic post-spanking "Bawww!" from both of them (Phil S. has written about the use of "Bawww!" elsewhere).

Now let's move forward one year to 1951 and see Pug requesting a spanking from Boots! There is an actual spanking by Boots of her son Davey which has been censored here. (To see the uncensored version or the dual paddling, drop Phil S. or me a note and we'll send them to you. They are omitted here because they involve juveniles getting spanked). Boots comes very close to concluding that no one is too old to be spanked, but wimps out and tells Pug that she is indeed to old to be taken OTK .


Sept. 23, 1951. © Newspaper Enterprise Associates

No other spankings of Boots or her Buddies are known at this time. I believe I've searched most of the Boots comic books, but it's always possible Phil will turn up something else from the strips. If Boots herself ever got the OTK treatment (delightful idea), it
was probably in the strip's early days - that's my guess, anyway.