The Potential of the Various Comic Book Genres
For the sake of clarity, if the word “spanking” is used without qualification, it means M/F spanking. The sad fact is there was probably more M/M than anything else during the Golden Age, but M/F is what most of us are interested in and it’s tiresome to continually have to use the qualifier “M/F”.
One more preliminary: I’ve never defined the various comic book “ages” in this forum, so to make sure we’re all on the same page, here are my definitions. While many scholars would disagree and there is certainly room for debate on the issue, it properly belongs on a general-interest comics board rather than here on
CSR, where I propose to settle the matter with these definitions:
- Golden Age (1936 – 1956)
- Silver Age (1956 – 1970)
- Bronze Age (1970 - 1985)
- Modern Age (1985 – Present)
Adventure: There were lots of adventure strips, but it’s hard to think of adventure books that didn’t really belong to some other genre like War or Superhero. Still, I gave it a rating of “medium” on the assumption that there were some titles out there I just wasn’t thinking of.
Boys Adventure: As I wrote above, “not enough girls!” This one we can safely ignore.
Classics – History: If you remember Classics Illustrated, then you know what we’re talking about here – condensed versions of the classics transferred to the comics medium. Very little of interest because great works of literature don’t generally feature a lot of M/F spanking. Tom Sawyer and Tom Brown getting caned don’t do us much good.
Crime (not including super-heroes): these stories were careful always to show the criminal, whether male or female, coming to a bad end. This was usually imprisonment or, in the pre-code days, a few guys were actually seen getting strapped into the electric chair. Next to that, I suppose spanking would have seemed tame. No point in searching through any more of these.
[05/09/2011 update: one spanking has now been found, in Crime and Justice #1, but my assessment of this genre remains the same, and we're not likely to find any more.]
Cross Media (Media Crossovers): the problem is similar to that in “Classics” – if the original didn’t have a spanking, the comic-book version won’t either. Forget these.
Funny Animal: we need human female spankees, not Donald Duck’s nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie!
Horror (Suspense): I’ve always detested this genre, and think criticism of it is futile – such a distorted, nightmarish view of reality requires a psychoanalyst, not an art critic. Whether you agree with my assessment of Horror or not, the fact is no spankings have ever been discovered there, or are likely to be in the future because the focus has to be on manipulating the readers’ emotions. There’s simply no way to work in a spanking where the plot centers on some rotting corpse wandering around at night.
Humor (not including funny animal): During the Golden Age, M/M spanking seemed to be considered humorous, mainly used for comic relief in adventure stories. Unfortunately, M/F didn’t seem to figure in to the comedic sensibilities of that era (except for Teen Humor, which is regarded as a separate category).
MAD was a milestone in American humor, but during its early days as a four-color comic it never had any spankings, nor did its many imitators until later when it had become a black and white magazine. The ones from MAD have probably all been discovered by now; none are known from
Cracked or
Crazy, but I remember seeing one in
Sick, which would be worth a further look. Magazine stuff falls outside the boundaries of a comic-book search anyway.
Jungle: Most of us would like nothing better than to see a Jungle Girl get spanked!
But this is extremely unlikely where she's the lead character. The jungle spankings we have are where a male is the lead character - Tarzan and Kaanga.
Still, I'm going to search every jungle comic I can find because the potential reward is so great.
Misc.: anything that doesn’t fit into the other categories. When you stop to think about it, these were never very common and are not a likely source of spankings.
Monster: artistically (in the literary sense) far superior to Horror, we still have the same problem we did there: Swamp-Thing, Man-Thing, and Tomb of Dracula were all fine comics, but there’s no way you could fit a spanking into any of them.
Pirate: fans of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons
Watchmen may remember that there was an interior plot with a boy reading a Pirate comic at a newsstand. Moore’s conceit was that Pirate comics had replaced superhero in the early 1940’s and hung around after that. There were a few strips set on the high seas, and I came across several pirate queens who certainly deserved the OTK treatment, but there aren’t any spankings except maybe that one from Hawk. I’m not sure this qualifies as a genre, but even if it does, it really isn’t worth searching through any further.
Science Fiction & Fantasy: some excellent comics came out of this genre, particularly from EC’s New Trend books. But with only one known spanking, and M/M at that, there isn’t likely to be anything left undiscovered. Certainly EC’s SF line is so well known (I have many of their reprints) that there can’t be anything there.
Smut: This genre, sometimes called “comix” to distinguish it from non-smut, began in the 1960’s with the Undergrounds and then flourished later on with some independent publishers, most notably the Fantagraphics
Eros line. “Mainstream” smut has always had a few spankings, for instance the scene in the movie Debbie Does Dallas. But is it worth sifting through all this trash just to find a few panels by people who for the most part couldn’t care less about good spanking? There are a few exceptions, for instance
Brian Tarsis did a little work in this area, and he’s definitely a spanko with significant artistic chops. We’ve also seen at least two good spankings by
Rebecca, and the legendary
Robert Crumb, whose work we’ve never liked despite his obvious talent, certainly did a few. Reluctantly, we have to admit there could be more here.
War: Commercial comics may have reached their zenith with EC’s war books. However, I have reprints of many of them, and there aren’t any spankings. Marvel and DC had some good work in this genre also, but the focus on scenes of men in combat necessarily limits the possibilities for M/F spanking. On the other hand, the two known spankings, one from Marvel and the other from DC, are both so good that perhaps my rating for this genre of “Low” should be reconsidered. On the other hand, I waded through tons of these books during
The Great Golden Age Spanking Search, and I didn’t find one spanking! (The two referred to above were located by different means). If I had to guess, I’d say there was probably one more spanking scene somewhere, but where?
Romance:
I’ve mentioned repeatedly in other posts that it was unlikely for a female protagonist (super or not) to get spanked in her own book. Wonder Woman did, Black Widow and Hellcat almost (BW’s name had just been removed from the
Daredevil book at the time of her spanking, and HC’s took place in Defenders). Brenda Starr did, if we expand the discussion momentarily to include strips as well as books. But by and large, simple comic-book plots don’t generally lend themselves to the heroine getting spanked. The one big exception is Romance comics, and even there only in one or two sub-categories.
Romance comics strongly encourage their readers to identify with the female protagonist, and tend to fall into a few familiar formulas. Off the top of my head:
1. Girl can’t get Boy to notice her.
2. Girl can’t decide between two boys.
3. Girl and Boy want each other but are kept apart by malign forces (parents, etc.).
4. Girl loves Boy, but has a rival (usually unscrupulous) for his affections.
5. Girl loves Boy (who may be wrong for her), engages in petty, childish behavior, gets taught a lesson (sometimes spanked, sometimes not) and emerges the better for it. Does not always get Boy, but may get another guy instead.
#5 is of course the type where most spankings occur (there have also been many missed opportunities when a spanking should have been administered but wasn’t). #4 is possible also, although there it’s probably the romantic rival who would get spanked (similar to the Hedy Wolfe spankings in
Patsy Walker).
Since only one or two plot-types have the potential to lead to a spanking scene, it’s not surprising that the “spanking density” isn’t really all that high in Romance comics. I make this statement based on experience since firm numbers are not available, even from the
Comics Spanking Data Base. But the spanking-potential was always there, and with the vast quantity of Romance comics published during the Gold and Silver Ages, the total number of spankings was bound to be impressive. A number of these are surely waiting to be discovered.
Teen Humor: I was surprised at how many of these I found. Betty and Veronica from the Archie gang, Suzie (also from Archie), Beezy, Candy, and Kiki Kelly in Quality, etc. It was a little disturbing to see how many times Archie and Jughead got spanked by their fathers back in the 40’s, and Archie also got paddled as part of an initiation, but never mind that now – the important point is that teen-age spankings were seen as humorous (especially during the Golden Age), and so there must be some more out there, even confining ourselves to M/F, which we should. (F/F was extremely rare during the GA).
Superhero: Those of us spankos who grew up during the Silver Age heavily involved with comics generally have a great love for superhero spankings. This is unsurprising when we remember that the superheroes rose from their postwar obscurity to take over the medium in the 1960’s, while other genres like Romance and Horror, hampered by Comics Code restrictions, went into decline. To see a superhero giving a spanking is a great joy, only surpassed by seeing a superheroine receiving one!
At this point, however, it is unlikely that many remain undiscovered among the
Silver Age books, although I feel they are still worth looking for because they are so desirable! With diligent and perhaps carefully targeted searching, we might locate one or two. The
Golden Age is another matter – I’d bet money that there are several undiscovered spankings, and they deserve to be sought out.
Also, we shouldn’t forget about the
Bronze and
Modern Ages, either – strange as it may seem, there have been a lot of spankings during this period, and there are probably more just waiting to be found. I stopped actively collecting around 1996 after several years of declining interest, so I don’t know the most recent portion of the Modern Age very well.
In Part 4, we’ll try to put all this together into some kind of practical and effective search strategy.
