hugob00m wrote: Do you think it would be an improvement if I gave Katie a husband? ...Or should I leave well enough alone and continue to do stories with an unmarried Katie?
I'd like your opinion, and along with that, the opinions of the people who enjoy seeing your art and comment on it regularly.
Tough question, b00m. I think the only way to answer it is to try to get to the heart of what makes O.T. Katie work, and then see if that's compatible with giving her a husband.
Basically, Katie is drawn in a way that makes readers want to spank her. Since this is impossible, the next best thing is to set up situations in which we (the readers) can
vicariously spank her by identifying with Mr. Kauf and the other authority figures who actually do the deed. Katie's feelings about being spanked are basically irrelevant; this is very similar to
Dan DeCarlo's Humorama spanking cartoons where we want to see the secretary get spanked for our pleasure (which of course is the boss's pleasure also). There is a difference: DeCarlo's spankees usually haven't done anything to actually deserve punishment, while Katie typically has. But I think this largely comes about from DeCarlo doing one-panel cartoons, unlike Katie which is of course a comic strip. DeCarlo's repeated joke is that the secretary is getting spanked because the boss (and reader) want to do it; Katie's humor depends on a slow build-up and release of tension as Katie schemes to get away with something, digging herself in deeper all the time, then gets the spanking(s) everyone could see coming
except Katie herself. Despite this difference, the outcome is the same: spankee gets turned over boss's (and reader's) knee, because that's what DeCarlo's bosses, and Katie's bosses, and the readers, want to do.
The appeal of the romantic scene is somewhat different: it is the interplay of dominance and submission, here in the form of spanking, that underlies basic human sexuality.
Note that it is not necessary for the female to be an actual spanko to enjoy being made to submit to a spanking administered by her man. Consider, e.g., the two spankings Queen Pera receives in The Phantom. Pera isn't a spanko (as far as we can tell), but when The Phantom spanks her she wants him, and then later when Count Jorge spanks her she wants
him! This is a crucial point in contexts other than our discussion here as well.
Female submission to male desire, then, is the heart and soul of romantic spanking. She can be a spanko or not, but her feelings of submission
must be portrayed in order to make such a scene work. See, e.g., Phil's recent paddling cartoon above, in which we don't know whether the woman likes being spanked, but there's no doubt that her lover has demanded and gotten her complete surrender. This has nothing in common with the O.T. Katie we know (and love), who accepts her spankings but isn't portrayed as experiencing her submissive desires through them, and who is only sometimes attracted to the man spanking her - she is with Scottie MacHottie, but definitely not to Mr. Kauf!
That is the Katie of today. You could, of course, introduce a romantic spanker for her, but then you would have to change everything about the strip except Katie's visual design. Instead of doing that, it seems to me that if you want to explore romantic spanking, you would be well-advised to create two
new characters for this purpose together with a new strip to go with them.