With the market for old Humorama digests having gone crazy because of about two people (yesterday an issue of
Joker which should have been worth about $5.00 sold for $32.00!), there is almost no chance that I will be able to get any more before my stock of Humorama spanking cartoons runs out on Aug. 30. But as the
Humorama Series, which I've been running every week since the beginning of 2011, comes to a "close", the obvious question to be asked is, "How many more Humorama spanking cartoons are still out there waiting to be discovered?" I spent some time trying to analyze this problem, and I'd like to share my results now for all you Humorama fans out there.
My basic method was to determine what proportion of digests through the prime years of 1955 - 1962 I had no access to, and then compute how many "spankers" they might contain. As of 07/05/2013, I had 138 of 300 issues including 7 belonging to
Steve W, who had scanned any "spankers" in them and sent them to me. This leaves 162 “missing” issues! However, the situation isn't as bad as it might seem because Humorama reprinted the 1955 - 1962 cartoons, in most cases twice, and because of the efforts of three people: myself, Dan, and Mike (M.D.). First, Dan had picked up a number of these cartoons over the years which he has shared with us here on this forum. Second, Mike bought a lot of digests during the mid-to-late 60's, obtaining many "spankers" on their second appearance. Finally, I had first become acquainted with Humorama's "spankers" on their
third appearance during the 70's, and I had a small number of these. I decided somewhat arbitrarily that Dan, Mike, and myself between us had probably found 2/3 of the cartoons not available from their first appearance.
Assuming one "spanker" per digest, this leaves us with 54 missing cartoons. But I had discovered 43 via the internet, bringing us down to 11, and Michael recently found two more, leaving 9. I'm going to suggest we just round that up to 10. Another factor that has to be considered is that Humorama started buying some new cartoons again during the 70's - five from
Bill Wenzel are known.
Bill Ward was still active, although
Dan DeCarlo was working only at Archie Comics,
Kirk Stiles had retired from active cartooning, and
Homer Provence seems to have died in 1975.
So where does that leave us? I'd say we should expect to find about 10 more spanking cartoons from the "classic" period, most likely done by Ward, Stiles, and
George Morrice, and an unknown number from the 70's, probably most of them by Wenzel but possibly some by Ward. I'd love to find an unknown one by DeCarlo but I don't think it will happen. I expect it will take years to find any significant proportion of these given current market conditions, the scarcity of certain titles like the revived
Wink, and the presumed spotty distribution of
Popular Jokes and
Popular Cartoons in Humorama's later years. And were there any spankings in Humorama's military title
Snafu? Inquiring minds want to know
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
!
Needless to say, when any new Humorama "spankers" come to light, I'll dust off the old Humorama Series and add another episode to it.