Threats and Missed Opportunities

[web-ed]

As I mentioned last time, these 52-page Golden Age teen humor books usually had guest appearances by other teen characters. Some had their own books; perhaps others were tryouts. Mitzi was one such character and even had her own book for a while. What set her apart was being drawn partly realistically and partly in a more cartoony fashion. I have researched all the issues of her own title and there's nothing of interest, but there is this one page from Jeanie #15. Mitzi's dad is strangely chasing her around with what the artist may have intended as a baseball bat, which would be really weird if correct, but it's awfully short and I think it just might be a paddle!

Unfortunately, the scene on the splash page never happened in the story, and there are no known spankings for Mitzi although of course there could be one in any of her guest-appearances (assuming there are some) that I haven't found yet.


From Jeanie #15 (September 1947). © Marvel Characters Inc.

[web-ed]

Of the Marvel teen girls other than the ones we've seen up until now, I think Margie probably most deserved to get spanked. Jeanie seems like rather a nice girl, and yet she's the one who actually got spanked! The spanking itself is off-panel, so let's see the set-up first.

Of course the plot is perfectly silly: Jeanie and Jeff are trying to find a place to practice their roles in some goofy school play. For some reason, they're doing a dress rehearsal, requiring Halloween-type costumes (I told you it was silly!), and for some other reason they can't find any place to rehearse except Jeanie's father's fraternal lodge hall.



Mr. Johnson (Jeanie's dad, the mustachioed gentleman wearing the purple suit) is apparently in charge of providing entertainment for the lodge meeting, so he hires a spiritualist act in which the assistant is to appear in a Halloween-type spirit costume at just the right moment. When the act starts, Jeanie appears by mistake, leading to general confusion.



From Jeanie #18 (March 1948). © Marvel Characters Inc.

[web-ed]

If at first you don't succeed...! Well, Sam the Spiritualist tries again, and Jeff appears, then he tries for the third time and all three "spirits" (Jeanie, Jeff, and the assistant who was conveniently absent the first two times) appear and cause a general panic. Psychologically absurd, but here it is:




Now with everyone having fled the lodge, ruining the evening's entertainment and, we may presume, getting Mr. Johnson in Dutch with all his lodge brothers, for some reason Jeanie and Jeff fail to rehearse in the now-deserted lodge and decide to go back to Jeanie's house. But when Mr. Johnson sees them (still in costume!), he hits the ceiling and spanks both of them, resulting in another "pillow strapped to behind" scene.


Jeff and Jeanie decide maybe acting in the play isn't for them, although I can't see why they couldn't play their roles standing up! From Jeanie #18 (March 1948).

[hugob00m]

Hi, Web-ed.

It was a cute (if somewhat goofy and entirely implausible) story, ending with Jeanie (and unnecessarily, her boyfriend, Jeff) doing the "pillow-tied-to-the-backside' thing. Since one spanking was paternal and the other was M/m, I don't mind that they were out-of-frame.

[butch46163@yahoo.com]

can someone explain spankings that take place off camera or panel is the person being spanked or not even though it set up to be a spanking but w never see it

[web-ed]

can someone explain spankings that take place off camera or panel is the person being spanked or not even though it set up to be a spanking but w never see it

I'm afraid, Butch, the only explanation is misplaced humor - the writers thought that spanking was primarily funny, so a final panel with the spankee wearing a pillow strapped on or a bunch of "pain stars" emanating was a fairly common occurrence. And I can't tell you how many times I've had to cringe while reviewing Golden Age Archie Comics (more of which are becoming available to me now) because Archie and Jughead lived in constant fear of being spanked by their fathers - yeuchh!

And spanking is very versatile in that it can be humorous. But the Humorama cartoons, for example, managed to combine humor with wit and a definite amount of eroticism, whereas in most of these teen humor titles they're used for pure humor.

[web-ed]

Here's a page from Ginger #2 (Summer, 1952). Ginger is afraid to join the Sigma Tau sorority because someone named "Bunny Clarke" is in charge of initiations:



"Can you imagine what she'd do to me during my initiation?"

No, Ginger, but we can imagine what we'd do to you if we were in charge, and it involves paddles...

I think the only sorority paddlings we've seen are the lame one from Winnie the Waitress and the bizarre ones from Wonder Woman. Natural spanking material, yes, but of course F/F and in practice (think of those bad black & white flicks from the 60s) generally not very well done.

[web-ed]

The last two months I've hardly had time to work on anything except "The ACES Artist," but the past couple of days I've returned to Marvel's Golden Age books and Cindy in particular. We saw Cindy's behind in jeopardy not long ago on this topic where she was making a guest appearance in Margie #42; this time the situation is very similar to one we saw with Patsy Walker: a misbehaving youngster sets his sights on Cindy's behind - literally - and looses a toy arrow that strikes the target.


Cindy gets the point! From Cindy #28 (Winter 1947-48). © Marvel Characters Inc.

The critical panel is drawn a little strangely, and it's hard to follow whatever Cindy's indicated path of motion was supposed to be when the arrow struck its mark.

[web-ed]

I remarked when we were going through Jeanie recently that of the Marvel teen-age girls we hadn't seen spanked, Margie probably deserved it most. For one thing, she was pretty violent with her boyfriend, even by comic-book standards, and she was generally difficult. Margie was never spanked in her own book, but she does get it in Cindy #31 (October 1948), where her strip makes a guest appearance.

After watching a sad movie, Margie decides that what she needs in life is more suffering:



However, her mother (who was always clobbering her father with a rolling pin) doesn't think too much of the idea, and asks her, "Margie, when was the last time I gave you a good healthy spanking?"

An interesting choice of words! Not "a good old-fashioned spanking" but "a good healthy spanking"!


© Marvel Characters Inc.

I agree with Margie's mother: spanking is healthy (I know I always feel much better after giving one !) Perhaps mother was referring the beneficial effects the spanking confers on the spankee, but in any case the only suffering Margie experiences results from a sore behind! Some nice pain stars a-flying and some heartfelt boo-hooing enlivens the scene.

No credits were given, but I know that Morris Weiss was the usual writer/artist on the Margie strip, so he may have done this one - a definite missed opportunity for an on-panel spanking!

[willjohn]

Robbie should have spanked Margie.

[web-ed]

Robbie should have spanked Margie.

Yes, he really should have. And I should have posted the following bit of silliness before the previous one, but I was so tired last night I simply forgot. So here is Margie once again, this time guesting in Frankie comics, in a scene that reminds me of the Stanley Rayon "Bikini Girl about to get Stung" cartoon but that isn't as good:


Margie's behind in jeopardy, from Frankie #8 (Winter 1947-48). Story and art by Morris Weiss. © Marvel Characters Inc.

Whether there's anything more with Margie I simply don't know yet. I've gone through all the issues of her own book, but there's still a lot of Timely Golden Age material out there and these teen-age characters turned up everywhere, so who knows?

[hugob00m]

Hi Web-ed.

It's another out-of-frame spanking, which I don't mind, since it was done by her mother. It was nice to see her rubbing afterward with all those pain stars.

I agree with WillJohn that she should've been spanked by her boyfriend. IN-FRAME! With those spindly arms of his, he might not add to her suffering much... but I'm sure he'd have a spanking good time putting his hand across her backside!

And the bee thing: it might have been better if she had gotten her bee-stung bottom spanked for dropping that bucket of paint! And it would've been better yet if the guy she dumped paint on had not been her father.

I think whoever wrote the story doesn't know much about house maintenance projects. Why would Margie and her father be painting the roof?

[butch46163@yahoo.com]

even though the spanking was off panel Margie did get a spanking!! the only sting Margie should have got was from her father across his knee Great fine

[web-ed]

Let's check out another undistinguished Marvel Golden Age Teen-Age Humor Book called Oscar. This first example is from Oscar #24 (Spring, 1947). Oscar and his girlfriend Kitty are kicked out - literally - from a movie theatre. Both get a boot to the behind, but Kitty lands on hers giving us a nice pratfall with some rubbing afterwards.


Artist and writer unknown. Kitty takes a pratfall.

Later in that issue, Oscar and his buddy take Kitty and Jane out on a double-date - or try to, since they have no money. The girls react the way teen-ages normally did in these comics - with violence!


Jane is good enough to bend over for us in Oscar #24 (Spring, 1947, but really issue #1 as I'll explain in the next post). Artist unknown.

Nice positioning with knees straight, head up, back arched and bottom up! Too bad no used that sign as a paddle to teach Jane that violence is not the way.

Worse, the sign was used as a paddle mere moments later, but it's a M/M scene we won't be seeing either here or on the main site, although I will have to record it in the Comics Spanking Data Base.

[web-ed]

Let's move forward from issue #24 to issue #2, strange as that sounds. I'm really not sure exactly what happened, except that issues #12 and 13 were renamed as Awful Oscar (and it must be said that Oscar was pretty awful), but #4's indicia indicates a publication date of Winter of 1947-48, placing it three issues after issue #24, which should therefore have been #1. The correction was made two issues later, when instead of #26 the book came out as issue #3!

Anyway, whatever the problem with the numbering was, Oscar's girlfriend Kitty had no problem bending over just as Jane did last time. Kitty goes over to Oscar's house to find him doing some carpentry work, and naturally bends over and places her hands on a suspiciously-low sawhorse:


From Oscar #4 (Winter 1947-48), artist and writer unknown.

Let's have a closer look, shall we?


Reminds us of Matt Baker's Skygirl, always bending over at the drop of a hat. Since Oscar seems to be so handy with carpentry, you'd think he could make a nice paddle and take advantage of Kitty's positioning!

One more - see next post.

[web-ed]

But Kitty wasn't done yet! Later that same issue (#4, if you remember the numbering confusion I "explained" last time), Kitty is now wearing e
shorts, and bends over again!


From Oscar #4. Kitty bends over once more, hands on knees and head up - classic paddling position! © Marvel Characters, Inc.

No one knows who drew this, and it doesn't really look like Matt Baker although all that gratuitous bending over does remind me of Skygirl.

No spankings for Kitty are known, but there could be some more appearances of Oscar I haven't seen yet because I haven't gotten to Awful Oscar.

[hugob00m]

Hi, Web-ed.

The unknown artist did a good job with the proportions of his character, Kitty. She looked really cute bending over. Has she gotten spanked in a story that you haven't found yet? It would be great if you did find a spanking, but I'm not holdong my breath.

This is a great missed opportunity. And we can imagine "Awful" Oscar finially having enough and putting her over his knee.

[butch46163@yahoo.com]

Kitty have a very tempting target and i love how the artist drew her in that exciting position Good find!!

[web-ed]

Li'l Abner was so successful a strip that it spawned many imitators in comics (and if you remember The Beverly Hillbillies on television, that situation was basically taken from several Abner strips in which Abner and/or some other characters leave Dogpatch and head for the big city). One of these imitators that we'd like to forgive was Babe, Darling of the Hills, which was like Abner with Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae strangely combined into the single character Babe.

Babe was a babe, and if we ever find a spanking scene in the strip with her on the receiving end I'm sure we'll forgive its obvious plagiarism. In the meantime, let's take a look at two scenes, both missed opportunities. First we have the cover of Babe #8:


Cover art by Boody Rogers.

This is sort of a "kitchen sink" cover with a whole lot of unrelated junk thrown in. There's even a pig modeled on Abner's pet, Salomey! Why a centaur would be found in the hills or be wearing a tie is beyond me, but those bees seem to be homing in on Babe's bee-hind unless they're supposed to be horse flies. I really hate insect-sting stuff, but I guess this qualifies as a "behind in jeopardy" so we'll let it go as an introduction to the character.

In our second example, Babe actually get's the old "billy goat butting" treatment we've seen before. Here it is, from Babe #6:


Story and art by Boody Rogers.

I thought I had the page after this, but I can't find it now so it must not have been worth keeping. Billy-goat butting is usually pretty silly and we don't even have truly good bending-over positioning here, but you have the love the sheer quantity of the pain stars, surely the most ever used to indicate a smarting rear end!

Since Abner had quite a few spankings, it would be logical for Babe to have included a few as well, but so far I haven't found any and I have searched ten issues (the Grand Comics Data Base reports the existence of an eleventh but I cannot find it). Therefore, this will probably be the last we see of Babe - a walking missed opportunity if ever there was one.

[hugob00m]

Hi, Web-ed.

Interesting find. I had not heard of this character before, Also, I was not familar with cartoonist Boody Rogers. He has an interesting way to draw a pretty woman. Babe has moderate-to slightly-large breasts, and a big ribcage to support them. She also has an extremely narrow waist. Too bad you haven't found any examples of Babe getting spanked yet, and it sounds as if there probably aren't any.

She's a great missed opportunity.