You’re right, Web-ed, when you say that the 77 panels in Overbarrel's
"Good Marks" opus are the stuff of legend. I would just want to say here that my favorite of Overbarrel's stories,
"Family Tradition," which ran from 2/27/15 to 3/13/16, brought us SEVENTY-TWO panels; a close second in numbers, I guess, but I think it is superior to
"Good Marks" for reasons unconnected to the number of pictures.
I believe there is more to a spanking story than the number of pictures you put into it.
"Good Marks" is certainly the champ as far as the number of girls who get spanked. Let's see: Xandra, Anna, Barb, Peggy... that's four, isn't it? In my favorite,
"Fam Trad," there are only two spankees, just as there were only two spankees in another fave,
"One Good Turn." But those numbers should not be the major selling point.
An excellent spanking story should create, in addition to pics of pretty bottoms being spanked, a delightful frisson that arises from the situation. A girl getting her bottom whacked is nice, but how much nicer if the spankee is a person from a higher social level than the man spanking her. That is one of the reasons we all enjoyed seeing The Phantom – a commoner – spanking the naughty Queen Pera. And another commoner, Evad, putting his own superior, Queen Arda, over his knee for another good spanking. Situations like these make our nerve endings quiver. I’m pretty sure you know which “nerve endings” I’m talking about.
In a similar way, I am moved beyond joyousness when I see a good-looking and youngish mother, Miss Vicky, getting spanked by her husband Ulysses… right in front of their daughter Tina and son-in-law Steve. Omigod, how humiliating! Of course Overbarrel does the right thing and has the spanking take place right in front of the kids, deepening Vicky’s humiliation; remember, Vicky is the nominal "authority figure" since she is Tina's mother and this all takes place in Vicky's own house. This eventually leads to Steve spanking Tina, as we all expected. But the frisson of seeing your good-looking mother-in-law getting soundly spanked with her skirt up and her panties down just had to affect Steve, and in a major way!
If I may inject a mention here of my own work: My own heroine, whom I call Spanky Sal, has been frequently spanked by authority figures: A traffic cop, a foreign ambassador, her college professor, et cetera. But a few years ago I decided to have Sal go over the knee of one of her own male students: A seventeen-year-old boy named Tommy! He loves spanking his pretty teacher (she, not he, is the authority figure) and she apparently doesn’t mind.
Back to Overbarrel: Yes, I love
“One Good Turn” and once considered it Overbarrel’s finest work. It really is wonderful, especially the poser artistry. But the only spanker in the story is the authority figure: father of one spankee and the grandfather of another. Overbarrel's recent
“Good Marks” is another good story, with all those pretty girls getting their fannies spanked to a crimson hue. But remember: in this story the spankers and the spankees are all college students, thus they are all on the same social level. To my mind,
“Family Tradition” is (so far) Overbarrel's masterpiece because of the exciting frissons (there’s that word again) he provides to go along with the spankings.
Cheers,
Dan