Artwork — Justice 32
Continuing on the theme of orphaned artwork not connected to a specific story or comic strip, here are three fabulous drawings by the illustrator for early Blushes (I think maybe Alan Bell), which were featured in issue 32 of Justice magazine. Each of them tells a story in itself.
Firstly, here is The Volunteer:
What is going on here? The headmaster stands, hands on hips
holding a cane, surrounded by a group of girls — three senior-looking ones
(prefects?) one of whom is holding a report, and seven younger plump-bottomed
girls in vest and pants, one of whom has her hand up to volunteer. What is she
volunteering for? Is this a group punishment and she has offered to go first,
or is she volunteering to offer up the name of the culprit the Head is looking
for (possibly the girl on her left, hence her alarmed look)? Are those
punishment marks already on the volunteer’s bottom and that of her neighbour?
What is the role of the prefects here?
Food for pleasant thought, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Next is Punishment Crosses:
In this picture, the young lady has been given a sound
strapping on her bare bottom, and has been left in the uncomfortable position
of having to hold onto an overhead pipe while not letting her feet lose contact
with the wide-apart crosses marked on the floor. Those look like school
knickers, tie and socks, so we might guess this is a schoolgirl, but the open
blouse, the dingy basement room and the unconventional punishment posture all
point to this being an unofficial punishment. Has the caretaker got a new
victim maybe? Or is Basil & Reggie's secret place still in use? The girl peers over her shoulder in fearful anticipation of her tormentor’s
return and her toes look like they might lose contact with the crosses any
moment…
Finally, here is My Upside Down World:
This is a more straightforward case of a rosy-bottomed
schoolgirl receiving her comeuppance over the lap of a teacher, maybe Mr Howell
from The Bookstore and Detention Room, while he holds her head down. She looks up slightly and the
look on her face is of shame and humiliation — has someone (I like to
imagine a junior boy) just entered the room to deliver a message?
'The Volunteer' and 'My Upside Down World' are among my favourite Alan Bell pieces. It's great to see them posted here, since their original home in 'Justice' - as opposed to 'Roue' or 'Blushes', the more celebrated magazines - means that perhaps they're rarely noticed.
ReplyDeleteMy take on 'The Volunteer' is that the prefects have assembled a class of girls for Headmaster's Detention, an occasion for which gym vests and navy blue panties are mandatory. If one or two of the detainees have been slapped already, this is because the prefects are assidious in rounding up promptly the girls on the Detention list. Only one of the girls was responsible for throwing a paper aeroplane in Mr Cedric's History class. Since Mr Cedric wasn't sure which one - he was writing on the blackboard at the time - the Headmaster has threatened to give the whole class six strokes apiece unless the culprit owns up and accepts a dozen. One girl volunteers to take the twelve. But was she actually the aeroplane thrower? Or is it a case of "I'M Spartacus!"? Or is she a kinky Miss who's already developed a taste for the Headmaster's stick? And will her valiant gesture be enough to spare her assembled friends a spanking anyway?
My take on 'My Upside Down World' is that the spanked, mortified girl is looking out at the Headmaster, Mr Hammond. Said fellow is doing his rounds of the classrooms at 4.30pm, checking that his Form Master colleagues are all keeping their end up by detaining and soundly smacking that day's choice of girls. Among Mr Hammond's redoubtable staff, the hefty, grunting Mr Winstanley is always on point.
I would have thought that in 'The Volunteer', the girl with her arm up is 'volunteering' the name of her fellow pupil to her left as the perpetrator of some misdemeanour, hence (as the text points out) the alarmed look of the girl so accused. That, to me, would give the picture more drama than one girl simply naming herself. I dare say that such an accusation might bring forth a denial and perhaps a counter accusation, girls being girls, as we well know. Unless the true culprit, whoever that might be, promptly confesses I would threaten the lot of them with a doubling of cane strokes as though they are all guilty. Should, however, the accused party immediately confess I would sentence her to 12 cane strokes and those who have remained silent to 6 a piece. The 'volunteer' in this case would go free. I think it's a very good idea to incentivise girls to tell on one another, indeed it is their duty to do so. In any case, however, what a wonderful bottomy feast awaits the headmaster and his cane, with at least 6 girls to painfully punish, one after the other.
ReplyDelete'The Punishment Crosses' is my particular favourite of these three pictures. Whilst the featured room is very redolent of Basil and Reggie's splendid 'secret place' chamber (though not identical to it), the crosses on the floor are an idea we find incorporated into the excellent Reform School Discipline video featuring, of course, Alan Bell himself. The crosses idea here though is, I think, even better utilised, what with the stretched positioning of the hands on the pipe or bar above. Such an exciting field of operation is opened up to a disciplinarian's attentions. Basil's fore and aft treatment, as featured in both The Cellar and A Secret Place, obviously comes to mind. Having said that, in many ways I do prefer the 'Reform School' setting to that of an ordinary school, it just seems to lend itself more easily to more severe and also more inventive forms of punishment, not to mention the liberties the chaps in charge might take with their charges. Hence, the open blouse and bared tits, for instance.
Incidentally, I've noticed that the Reform School Discipline video appears to have been taken down from this blog. That's a bit of a shame.
It has indeed been taken down. I have challenged the decision so fingers crossed it will return.
Delete