Spanking in comics 1919-1938

The Interwar period was a time of rapid social change and accelerated technological expansion. It was an era which saw the rise of Fascism and the fall of Wall Street; Mob vendettas in Chicago and a New Deal in Washington; abject poverty in Kansas and Babylonian excess in Hollywood. Radio and cinema were established as the dominant forms of entertainment as audiences all over the United States tuned in to Amos and Andy or flocked to the Flicker-shows to see Chaplin, Fairbanks and Pickford.

At a more concrete level, women enjoyed a greater sense of freedom and independence than had ever been possible before the Great War. The Roaring Twenties seemed to offer boundless possibilties for the Modern Girl as women attended universities and entered the work force in ever-increasing numbers. In those heady days of Jazz Bars, Speakeasies and Hollywood Scandals, it seemed that practically anything was possible.

The New Woman

The rise of the New Woman did not go unnoticed by the nation's newspapers. A veritable legion of 'Pretty Girl' strips sprung up practically overnight, as editors saw the potential of the growing female market. Larry Wittingon's Fritzi Ritz debuted in 1922, followed two years later by Chic Young's Dumb Dora and Abe Martin's Boots and her Buddies, all of which satisfied the sudden vogue for dizty society girls - generally referred to as 'flappers' in the domestic press. Although spanking imagery was rare during this period, the New Girl genre was important for a number of reasons.

First, Pretty Girl characters added a sexual dimension to the comics landscape by playing desirable young debutants off against wealthy, affluent (but ultimately hapless) college boys – a scenario already familiar from early twenties vaudeville and cinema. In keeping with the sexual stereotypes of the period, comic-strip flappers were usually slim, blond gold-diggers with dim-witted boyfriends and at least a dozen would-be lotharios on the side.

Secondly, the introduction of the Pretty Girl marked a crucial departure from the feminine stereotypes of the pre-war era. Whereas women had frequently assumed the position of indulgent providers (Mama in The Katzenjammer Kids) or strict disciplinarians (Ma in Buster Brown), adult women could now be the subject of punitive action, rather than instigators or passive onlookers.

In point of fact, Flapper strips would prove to have an extremely limited use-by date. Very few of them survived the Wall Street collapse, the Dustbowl and the Great Depression. In times of extreme economic hardship, frothy blonds and over-privileged frat boys just didn't seem all that funny. By the end of the 1920s most of the Flappers had gone the way of the dinosaur. However, as will be seen below, the image of the spoilt young heiress would play an important role in the corporal imagery of the following decade.

Angels and Orphans

It was during the same period that Little Girl strips first rose to prominence as a specific genre. As discussed in part one, young female characters had been largely relegated to supporting roles prior to World War One; by the middle of the twenties, Little Girls had begun to headline their own strips, crowding out their adult competitors in some cases. Some were merely juvenile versions of earlier 'flapper' characters, others were simple modifications of the archetypes established by Richard F. Outcault two decades before. A few, however, were entirely original creations, reflecting the changing cultural perceptions of the depression era.

The first successful title in this new wave was Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie (Chicago Tribune Syndicate, 1925). Annie was the epitome of the comic strip ‘Angel,’ a heroic, virtuous child who struggles and (constantly triumphs) over impossible odds. The strip was the proverbial overnight success, successfully combining a Prohibition-era storyline with Victorian melodrama to capture the public’s imagination and sympathies.

The story of the abandoned child rising above adversity was nothing new in literature; the theme could be traced back to nineteenth century sources on both sides of the Atlantic (cf Charles Dickens's David Copperfield, Oliver Twist etc). Annie’s originality lay in placing the Lost Waif in a recognizably contemporary setting, allowing the audience to identify with her daily tribulations.

Corporal punishment did not feature heavily in the strip (logically, a perfect child doesn’t require much discipline), although early episodes, set in a Chicago orphanage, implied that Annie had been subjected to Dickens-style beatings and cruelty. Where punishment was depicted, it was generally undeserved: Annie was most often viewed as a victim of circumstance or the malice of unscrupulous adults. This was a sharp contrast to the more light-hearted antics of her predecessors. While the Katzenjammer’s stinging denouements were meant to provoke laughter, Annie’s punitive imagery was milked for pathos.

Little Orphan Annie inspired a small number of competitors, the most successful being Ed Verdier’s Little Annie Rooney (1927). Despite the Cinderella plotline underscoring such strips, the trials experienced by orphan characters reflected – to some degree – the reality of childhood during the 1920s. The widespread violence of the Prohibition years was well-documented; children were not excluded from the general malaise of the times. Home discipline was often savage in the extreme, employing straps, switches and similar instruments. Young girls were particularly vulnerable at a time when domestic abuse was the norm; especially war orphans left in the care of unprincipled guardians. The plight of the homeless child was one that many readers could sympathize with.

As will be seen, however, not all children were quite so angelic.

Brats and Moppets

Standing in stark contrast to the 'suffering angel' was the insufferable brat, ably personified by Jimmy Hatlo’s blond-tressed trouble-maker, Little Iodine. Homely, accident-prone and utterly irrepressible, Iodine is one of the best-known female characters in a long line of high-spirited cartoon children. This is rather ironic, considering how obscure her beginings were. As Markstein points out in his online Toonopedia, pinpointing Iodine’s initial appearance is rather difficult, as she went though various transmutations before arriving at her final configuration.

Little Iodine was (most probably) the first of the mischievous Little Girl (LG) strips that would rise to prominence during the 1930s, effectively filling the gap left by the ‘Flapper’ strips of the previous decade. In many respects, she represented a major deviation from the formulas established by Buster Brown and the Katzenjammers. Unlike Hans and Fritz, Iodine wasn’t willfully antisocial, she was simply incapable of avoiding disaster by nature. Nor, by the same token, was she a babe-in-the-woods like Florence from the Outcault strip; Iodine didn’t need a Buster Brown to get her into trouble.

While Iodine was probably the first of her line, a few of her successors followed close on her heels in terms of mass popularity. Iodine’s biggest competitors during the Thirties were Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy (United Features, 1933) and Marjorie Henderson Buell’s Little Lulu (Saturday Evening Post, 1935). Together, these three characters laid the foundation for a new genre in spanking art and launched many of the conventions still in use today.

In each case, reader empathy determined the series’ widespread fame; everyone who had ever been a child could identify with the largely slapstick storylines; conversely, anyone who'd ever had a child could find rueful humor in the girls' innocently destructive behavior. Given the frequently antagonistic relationships presented in each strip, spanking functioned as a unifying element between the adult and juvenile characters, bringing a logical conclusion to the ongoing confrontations. Subsequently, the audience was provided with amusement on the one hand and a sense of justice on the other – a defining element of corporal scenarios within the American comics mainstream.

The Iodine-Lulu-Nancy triumvirate established a number of precedents commonly associated with Little Girl strips. For instance, in contrast to today's bare-bottomed imagery, mainstream LG characters were usually spanked over the panties. Contrary to popular belief, this was not done for moral or ethical reasons, as the graphic depiction of naked children was quite acceptable during this period (cf the Coppertone Girl).

Rather, panty-spanking was a commonly accepted visual convention employed by many artists, no different to (for example) the abbreviated hemlines dresses or hair-bows used to signify femininity in LG characters. In effect, the image was used to reinforce traditional gender stereotypes - where the Katzenjammers were routinely paddled on the trousers, Lulu was spanked on her white cotton underpants (a humorous element read as 'cute' rather than fetshistic).

At the same time, panty-spanking implied the character's status as a minor; ie, in mainstream comic strips, little girls were spanked on the underwear, while adult women were spanked fully-clothed (the exception being that adult panty-spanking was a major theme in men's magazines of the 40s and 50s, cf Dan Decarlo, Bill Ward).

Main Article: Little Girls in Comics

Daring Exploits!

Around the same time that Little Girl strips were coming to the public notice, an entirely new chapter began in the development of comic strips. While slapstick comedies and pretty girls had dominated the market during the early twenties, the debut of Tarzan and Buck Rogers in 1929 unleased a new wave of adventurers who literally overwhelmed the funny pages with their devil-may-care exploits. This was a totally new direction, requiring an entirely different approach to storytelling and illustration.

Spanking imagery also took a sharp upswing during this period. Once more taking a cue from Hollywood (and a lesser extent, 'spicy' pulp literature), American cartoonists began to experiment with cheesecake and mild sexual imagery from a strictly romantic viewpoint. Although outright adult nudity was extremely rare, fetish-based images were quite acceptable to the news-reading public - stiletto heels, seamed stockings and plunging necklines were common symbols of femininity throughout the thirties. Perhaps most importantly, OTK spanking was portrayed taking place between adult participants.

This represented a significant paradigm shift in the comics mainstream. Although M/F spanking had occurred sporadically during the 1920s, the context was usually farcical and 'cartoonish,' minimising the sexual element. Spanking was now an expression of gendered conflict as opposed to the adult/child scenarios of the previous decades. The artwork was detailed and mature, allowing for a realistic portray of the protagonists.

Prominent adeventure strips featuring (sporadic) M/F spanking imagery include:

• Mandrake the Magician (Lee Falk & Phil Davis, 1934)
• Jungle Jim (Don Moore & Alex Raymond, 1934)
• The Phantom (Lee Falk & Ray Moore, 1936)
• Prince Valiant (Hal Foster, 1937)

Main Article: Spanking in 1930s Adventure Strips.

Overview

It may be argued that the interwar decades marked the evolution of modern comic spanking imagery. It was during this period that the distinction between generational spanking (adult vs child) and gendered spanking (Man vs Woman) became more clearly defined. From a structural perspective, Little Girl strips featured spanking imagery towards the end of the story, effectively concluding the episode. On the other hand, Adventure strips normally featured the spanking scene near the middle of the story, suggesting that the punitive imagery was part of a larger narrative. A comparitive analysis between the two genres reveals the reasons for this evident dichotomy.

To begin with, the primary focus of Little Girl strips was on the antagonistic relationships between adults and children. As mentioned above, the "last-panel spanking" functioned as a humor-based "safety-valve" for the seemingly interminable conflicts. Subsequently, generational spanking was utilized as the 'punchline' to any given LG story (the same convention had previously been applied to little boy strips like Buster Brown or Little Jimmy).

On the other hand, gendered spanking in 1930s adventure strips was almost exclusively M/F, concentrating on the frequently adversarial romantic relationships between men and women. Following the familiar Hollywood cliche of "hate first, love later," many comic strip lovers began as arch rivals, initially leading to squabbles and arguments. Under this scenario, spanking was frequently portrayed as a sign of blossoming romance.

In line with contemporary gender stereotypes, women were often represented as demanding, wayward, and somewhat rebellious - requiring a strong man and a firm hand to control their behavior. As it was completely unacceptable for a male to strike a female with his closed fist at the time, spanking was the preferred option. In other situations, the 'rebellious' female had to be 'protected' from her own wilful streak; for this reason, it wasn't unusual to see Jungle Jim take a spoilt young heiress over his knee for disobeying his orders to stay safely hidden.

It is significant to note that in these scenarios, the male was depicted as being in the right by virtue of superior age, experience or plain, old-fashioned horse-sense. The female, by contrast, was inviariably posited as pampered, selfish and generally unreasonable: an overprivileged child deserving of a well-smacked bottom. Such overt infantalizing of mature adult women tended to blur the boundary between M/F and M/f spanking. The message transmitted in 1930s adventure strips was that while boys could grow up to be iron willed globe-trotters, women would always be little girls in grown-up bodies.

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