Wednesday 17 June 2015

Flintstones Comics, June 1965

Pebbles and turtles. Pebbles and pelicans. Pebbles and postman. Yes, if you love Pebbles Flintstone, you got to see her two or three times a week in the comic pages of your daily paper 50 years ago this month. Oh, there was also Pebbles and Dino and Pebbles on her own. Fortunately, other characters from the TV show were the focus of other strips so there was a bit of variety.

The sets of daily strips you see posted are for May 31st through June 5th (to the right), June 7th through 12th, June 14th through 19th, June 21st through 26th and June 28th through July 3rd. A few random thoughts...

● Another new-invention/what-will-they-think-of-next ending (June 7)
● Suburban clichés, including jealous wives (June 3), bad women drivers (June 16), women won’t shut up (June 22, July 1), wives want a fur coat (June 28), barbecuing (June 25), wives love shopping (June 14), marriage is the old ball-and-chain (June 19).
● Why isn’t Dino barking like on the TV show? (June 29).
● Another invention featuring birds doing all the work, this time the prehistoric typewriter (July 3). Does the repairman in the first panel look like Jack Gilford to you?
● Bamm Bamm makes an appearance (June 25).
● Mr. Slate still isn’t Fred’s boss in the comics (June 30).
● Best gag? Hard to say. I like the prehistoric snake yo-yos (June 11). And you can’t beat pre-historic creatures with tusks and spots (last panel, June 2).
● No Water Buffalo gags, but a golf gag appears. (June 24).



Now, the weekend comics:

June 6, 1965

June 13, 1965

June 20, 1965

June 27, 1965

The Chicago Tribune cancelled two of the four Flintstones Sunday comics for ads so we’re relying on the Ogdensburg Journal, which are scanned and found on the New York State Historic Newspapers site. They’re all pretty self-explanatory. The postman returns on June 20th; check out the magazines that are on sale (McClod’s?). The last panel on the June 27th comic is fun. The earth’s tilted and the tree is bent under the weight of the sleepy pterodactyl. And that’s a great clutter panel (second row) in the June 13th comic.

Click on any of the comics to make them full sized.

11 comments:

  1. I'm guessing the Sunday panel with Pebbles singing was done about the same time the folks over in animation were working on their big Season 6 opener, with Fred's dream about a singing Pebbles & Bam Bam becoming the Stone Age equivalent of The Beatles.

    There's no direct connection between the two, but the synergy of what's showing up in June and what would show up in September is interesting (as is the Trib's scrubbing of two weeks worth of panels -- "The Flintstones" took a big ratings hit with the move to Thursday to start Season 5, and never really recovered, so the paper's decision to dump this particular strip for some more ad revenue could be a sign of the series' overall waning popularity by mid-1965).

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    1. Awww.I love Pebbles's singing in that one....and I have to part company with Yowp in admitting to liking that Beatle parody, which was called "No Biz Lie Show Biz" and helped introuduce Ted Nichols's music to the studio.SC

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  2. Fixing...
    Here's the complete material of the Flintstones comic strip, carried in the newspapers from the whole world in June 1965 (via McNaught Syndicate), featuring the daily strips, all of them drawn by Gene Hazelton; and the Sunday pages drawn by Gene Hazelton (June 6, June 27) and Dick "Bick" Bickenbach (June 13, June 20).

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  3. The strip got a lot of mileage out of the Pebbles/Mailman cookie gag...even expanding into the Sunday page for 6/20. Hazelton must have loved that bit.

    The June 27 strip is reminiscent of the gags in "The Man Called Flintstone" feature film centering on the discrepancy between how First Class passengers are treated by the airlines versus the less prestigious classes.

    More Flintstones fun for June! Thanks!

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  4. Aw, c'mon. Who DIDN'T love Pebbles back then!

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    1. Me.
      I can take her or leave her. Some of the cartoons with her were good. Others, like that one with the sickeningly-syrupy "Sunshine" song and the cop-out ending, should be tossed in the rubbish bin.

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    2. To each their own, I guess. The song isn't the usual stuff I liked but something about the story's interested me and the O.Henry type ending mentioned always was interesting..but I understand what you're saying. Both the "Ann-Margret" and the "Bewitched" ones should be incinerated (I know that at least the second one yhou've said also took a toll, though I don't know your feelings on the Ann-Margrock one..)SC

      Of cours,e by 1971 when she became Daphne--ahem--Josie---Kitty from Cattanooga Cats--Teenage Pebbles voiced by Sally Struthers..FORGET IT (I know that you've said as much..)

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    3. I hope you guys are just kidding when you say certain cartoons should be discarded. The bad ones are also an important part of animation history. They show how and why H-B animation declined. Thus, their existence makes the early H-B cartoons all the more special. Plus, all cartoons have their fans. I myself enjoy watching Hong Kong Phooey, Sealab 2020, Scooby-Doo with Scrappy-Doo, the Smurfs, and the original Scooby-Doo series (sort of -- mostly for the background drawings and the sound effects; there's something about the appearance of the villains and the drawings of the settings that really fascinates me).

      I've actually never seen the three Flintstones episodes you guys mention, so I don't have an opinion about them. I definitely agree with Pokey on the "Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show." I watched a few episodes on Boomerang not too long ago. That show has its moments, but Pebbles's catchphrase ("Yabba-Dabba-Doozy"), which she says way too often, really started to irritate me after a (short) while…

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  5. The Flintstones daily strip from June 11, 1965 (drawn by Gene Hazelton) makes an allusion to the yo-yos, which were in vogue not only at the 60s, as also were in vogue at the 80s.

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  6. Have you seen in the Flintstones Sunday page from June 6, 1965 (drawn by Gene Hazelton), the frog making a strong note for Pebbles?
    I could notice the strong note made by the frog, looks like the Columbia Records (CBS Records outside the USA and Canada) logo.

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