If you’ve read a lot of golden and silver age comics, as I have, you’ve no doubt noticed that spankings pop up from time to time. A lot, actually. It wasn’t a consistent, every-issue thing, but it popped up enough to make me, decades later reading the reprints in the ’90s, go “Huh?”

To be fair, this trend existed in movies, TV and advertising, but somehow it’s even weirder in comics.

Wonder Woman, of course, was full-on, undisguised BDSM from the getgo.

Superman was all about spanking, watching and enjoying someone else getting spanked, or getting spanked himself and injuring the hands of his spankers with his ass of steel. Jerry Schuster, co-creator of Superman, had previously pencilled BDSM comics.

Coincidence?

He even got spanked by President Eisenhower.

Perhaps the weirdest Superman spanking panel of all time, though, is this:

Batman occasionally spanked both women and Robin, but engaged in such behavior far less frequently than Superman did.

Oftentimes he would merely threaten to spank.

Captain Marvel made spanking a family activity, with even Captain Marvel Jr. getting in on the action.

Like father, like mother, like son:

Captain Marvel Jr even spanked Hitler!

Marvel comics, though, weren’t about to be outspanked by the competition:

So yeah, it was totally a thing, and there’s no WAY it was innocent.

Did spanking in comics influence generations of kids like myself to grow up to be kinky pervs, or did they simply amplify and feed an existing desire?

Comics, like I said, were only one component of this odd spanking trend in entertainment, so I doubt they had any more impact than anything else. it’s one of those “Which spanked first, the chicken or the egg?” mysteries.

Wait, no it’s not.