Chicago Spanking Review

Fifi Spanks She-Hulk

Comics Gallery 1

Dr. Bong watches as his French maid Fifi spanks She-Hulk. Art by Tim Phillips. Characters © Marvel Characters Inc. (click to increase in size). Posted by the Web-Ed on 08/21/2020.

We come now to what has to be the most bizarre character combination in this year's Super-Spanking Summer. Technically, all three come from mainstream Marvel comics: Dr. Bong (the bloke with the clapper in place of the left hand he lost while performing in a rock band, strange as that sounds), Fifi, his French maid and anthropomorphic duck, and of course She-Hulk, the only one of the three whom CSR readers could reasonably be expected to recognize. We'll come back in a moment to why this combination is so strange; for the moment we'll simply mention that it is the creation of Tim Phillips, whom we've seen in this gallery before, and that the spanking itself is o.k. given that (1) She-Hulk is standing rather than bending over or being taken over Fifi's knee, and (2) Dr. Bong isn't the one giving the spanking, even though he could have done so as long he used his right hand. Nice round bottom on spankee She-Hulk and a recognizable "superhero style" as usual from Phillips, although to make the idea clearer, Fifi's line should have read "The harder I smack ze She-Hulk's beeg beautiful butt..."

The cover of Howard the Duck #15 (August 1977). Art by Gene Colan (pencils) and Tom Palmer (inks).

Now Doctor Bong and his creation/servant Fifi were introduced back in Howard the Duck #15 (August 1977) and Fifi was apparently killed in an explosion in issue #19, but this was three years before She-Hulk's debut so right there that made no sense to us. (As a partial explanation, Fifi was brought back in Sensational She-Hulk #5 (September 1989), which is why She-Hulk makes reference to not remembering the plot unfolding that way). As for Bong himself, he was based on the then-popular columnist for the Chicago Tribune Bob Greene. Of course, Gerber had to be careful to avoid any possible lawsuits, but the only clues to the inspiration for Dr. Bong were Greene's stint as a roadie for Alice Cooper and Bong's real name, Lester Verde (verde = green).

As we recall, one reader wrote in to complain that Fifi was too good a character to be killed off, but writer/editor Steve Gerber, who started the story in HTD #15 as a parody of H. G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, stated emphatically that Fifi was definitely deceased. Evidently John Byrne agreed with that HTD reader from twelve years before when he brought Fifi back in Sensational She-Hulk #5, but as popular an artist for Marvel as he was at the time, we concur with Gerber that Fifi's finish should have been final.

And that brings us to Steve Gerber (1947 - 2008). He was certainly one of the most interesting writers of comics' Bronze Age, yet we always felt his talents had been misdirected. Howard was his one real hit (yes, the Kiss comic book sold well but Gerber obviously didn't create Kiss), and we think it both obscured his even better work on Man-Thing (first series, in which Howard by the way made his comics debut) and later diverted him from doing more significant work after HTD. For example, when he was fired from Marvel, Gerber sued them for ownership of Howard, a case he had no chance of winning since he had signed the standard work-made-for-hire agreement. It would have been better for him artistically to have given up on Howard and created some new characters that he would have owned.