Spanking in Crime Comics?

[Tanner]

Know you have researched extensively several genres of old comics for spankings, like romance, westerns, superheroes, etc. How about crime comics? There were lots of those back in the Golden Age, and they were an major topic of Wertham's ire in his campaign that sold the argument that comic books turned kids into juvenile delinquents.
There is a great site called ComicBookPlus that you may already know, tons of old comics that are now in the public domain and they scan them in. They are very adamant about material protected by copyright, you won' t see DC or Marvel. But a lot of old comics that like me you probably will not have heard of. They also have some newspaper comic strips.
Did uncover one spanking in a Western comic there, Wyatt Earp #5 , Dec 1958-Feb. 1959, Dell, story called Gun Wild Fever, rich spoiled girl likes to shoot up town, gets arrested, spanked in court by father. Unfortunately in the panel, the back of the spanker is turned toward the reader.
Nothing else so far, have been going through one of my favorite genres, jungle comics, but nothing so far, some nice female villains, but the writers seem to prefer to kill them off rather than get them spanked.
Back to crime comics, love the theme of women criminals and lawbreakers having to undergo painful and embarrassing justice applied to the right place. Like to find one with a gangster's moll being spanked.

[Sweetspot]

Did uncover one spanking in a Western comic there, Wyatt Earp #5 , Dec 1958-Feb. 1959, Dell, story called Gun Wild Fever, rich spoiled girl likes to shoot up town, gets arrested, spanked in court by father. Unfortunately in the panel, the back of the spanker is turned toward the reader.

Like you I was a little disappointed by the actual spanking panel in this one. But I really appreciate your pointing it out to us. It feels like the whole point of the story was to get this pretty girl spanked, that being the case, it was surprising that the spanking itself didn't get a better representation. On the other hand, the dialogue from Wyatt and in particular the judge who sentenced her to a "...hard spanking" was quite good.


Here's one from a crime 'comic' that was published in the funny pages of 1940 -

Sergeant Pat of Radio Patrol November 3, 1940 Pinky and Red are meddlesome teenagers and amateur crime solvers who are sometimes helpful and at other times, such as in this case, put themselves in danger and hinder the work of the police department.

RadioPatrolTitalPanelNovember3,1940.jpg (41.77 KiB) Viewed 5525 times

Sergeant Pat of Radio Patrol November 3, 1940. Sergeant Pat takes as his own the privilege of spanking comely Red while delegating Pinky's punishment to his subordinate.

RadioPatrolNovember3,1940.jpg (47.9 KiB) Viewed 5525 times

Sergeant Pat of Radio Patrol November 3, 1940 DETAIL. Radio Patrol lasted in one form or another from 1933 to 1950 and began as a detective strip in an urban setting at the request of many readers of the Boston Daily Record.

RadioPatrolNovember3,1940DETAIL.jpg (70.03 KiB) Viewed 5525 times

[butch46163@yahoo.com]

GREAT Find!!!!!!!!!!!! looks like Sergeant Pat is living up to his name good otk and good spanking on a deserving bottom I would love to see spankings in those old Spicy Detective and Mystery comics also Jungle comics a beautiful Gangster moll in a long tight 40's Skirt over the knee of a tough Detective being taught a hard lesson that crime don`t pay would be very exciting

[daneldorado]

I'm older than most of you guys, so I can report having seen this comic -- (Sergeant Pat of Radio Patrol) -- in its original printing.

Since I do remember the scene, I wondered if Web-ed would ever "dare" to print it here. And the reason I say that is that I remember there is also an M/M spanking in the scene, in the same panel. Guess I shouldn't have worried. The first cop does put "Red" (the girl gang member) over his knee and goes to "work." But the M/M image has been excised from the panel as printed here. Good show!

Chers,
Dan

[hugob00m]

Hi, Sweetspot. Great find!

I'd like to know a little bit more about the story here, but I get the impression that Red and Pinky are junior vigilantes, not criminals, hence a spanking and not an arrest.

I can't tell for sure in black-and-white, but I'm guessing that Red gets her nickname from her hair color. Now, however, I think there will be something else about her that lives up to the moniker!

[overbarrel49]

Hi Phil,

I have to agree with everyone else. This is a great find I think the artist did a great job of depicting the spanking of this young lady and he did so using 2 spanking panels . Thanks, Phil

[web-ed]

O.K., once again I'm coming late to the party - rats! - because I've got my hands full with the weekly updates and just keeping the lights on around here. I'm going to make two posts, one to respond to Phil S's great find and the other to try to answer Tanner's question.


This is a very nice scene that none of us (except Dan) even suspected existed until Phil dug it up. It is definitely going into the main site someday.

It is a crime comic, although not what critics like Fredric Wertham meant by "crime comic" a little later (1946-47 or so until the adoption of the Comics Code in 1954). Like other early specimens, this one featured the police in pursuit of criminals and was not overly lurid. Later on, the depictions of shootings, stabbings, and truly horrific violence aroused considerable concern, although no one, not even Wertham, could ever really prove that they did any harm to young readers. The rise in juvenile crime during that time was no doubt due to a variety of social factors, but rather than tackle such difficult problems it was easier to scapegoat comics (much as today it's easier to scapegoat guns rather than admit certain serious pathologies are at work in our society, especially certain segments of it).

One other example of the "long (spanking) arm of the law" comes to mind, More Fun Comics #11 / Federal Men #2. This was even earlier, in 1936. For details please refer to the Comics Spanking Data Base.


Reprinted version, from Federal Men #2. By Siegel and Shuster!

[web-ed]

O.K., now on to Tanner's question:

Know you have researched extensively several genres of old comics for spankings, like romance, westerns, superheroes, etc. How about crime comics? There were lots of those back in the Golden Age, and they were an major topic of Wertham's ire in his campaign that sold the argument that comic books turned kids into juvenile delinquents.

I have indeed researched most genres extensively, "Little Girl" or comics that otherwise feature only children being an exception. That includes many crime comics, which turn out to be a poor source of spankings. Of course it depends on how elastic our definition of "crime comic" is; to Wertham, almost everything was a "crime comic". Little Al of the Secret Service gave a nice spanking, and could be considered a crime comic. But what about The Saint #5 - is that a crime comic? Simon Templar wasn't a full-time detective in the books but more of an adventurer, so maybe he should be considered part of the Adventure genre.

Probably the purest example of the rare spanking in crime comics is Crime and Justice #1:



This is a paternal spanking, but not from a romance comic: as we recall, the father is actually murdered later on in the story. Women Outlaws #2 is another example, although the over-the-horse positioning is not as nice as OTK would have been. (See the Comics Spanking Data Base for more details and links).


Belle Starr gets the stars where she sits down in Women Outlaws #2.

It's unfortunate that I have to work from memory this way, but one mistake I made in setting up the CSDB is that I failed to include a column for "Genre". At the time I designed the DB, I was worried about the combined width of the columns when displayed on the page - I wanted no horizontal scrolling, which I think is a great annoyance on a web page. What I should have done is included the column in the DB and then not displayed it, which would still have allowed queries to be run by "Genre". In theory I could still add "Genre" as a new column, and maybe I will someday, but having the populate the table with over 800 rows would take a little doing.

I still look at crime comics when they become available, although most of the unread books I have "piled up" on my computer just now are romance comics. Anything that does turn up will be posted in due time - and let's hope we all live long enough to see it .

[butch46163@yahoo.com]

Hope there is some pretty Nice spanking gems in those comics!!

[willjohn]

Sad when you know that Calamity Jane and Belle Starr were both as plain as pikestaffs.

[butch46163@yahoo.com]

always picture Belle Starr as being a Hot redhead in need of taming in the old West

[willjohn]

From historical descriptions I doubt she would have looked like Elizabeth Montgomery or Gene Tierney, two actresses who played hr in films. Then again it is written that her choice of husbands gave her an unwarranted reputation and that she was more interested in being a wife and mother..