Wednesday 18 January 2017

Flintstones Weekend Comics, January 1967

Gene Hazelton or someone writing stories for Hanna-Barbera newspaper comics must have had rock-and-rolling nieces in mind. A Yogi Bear comic 50 years ago this month features one, and so does a Flintstones. We get golf in a couple, garbage in a couple and Fred drives four out of the five plots. Dino makes one incidental appearance and that’s in the opening panel of the January 1st comic. Barney shows up once and Betty not at all. The colour versions are courtesy of Richard Holliss.


January 1, 1967.


January 8, 1967. I like how wild dinosaurs stand around in the first panel, second row.


January 15, 1967. Nothing like a triceratops snow plow.


January 22, 1967.


January 29, 1967. Patty?! Shouldn’t her name be Rock-elle or Stone-ella or something like that?

5 comments:

  1. I've said it in earlier blogs, but I still think Wilma's dress colored black looks like she's in formal, and she and Fred are about to hit the town-Ha!

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  2. Patty as a character name may have been inspired by The Patty Duke Show.(Ironically, by then it was already a half-season off the air, having gone off in 1966.)SC

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  3. Some great expressions on Fred...panel 1 in the January 8th is priceless. Also in the January 15th, the second panel in the second tier and the first panel in the bottom tier. And January 22, final panel, his expression is worth checking out, as well. There are other good expressions throughout, as in the final cartoon, but they are more typical.

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  4. “Be-Rock Records”?

    Um, is this the worst possible Stone-Age version of “The Beatles”, or is it some sort of pun on “Be-Bop”?

    Either way, it’s a case of the writer (whomever it may have been) trying too hard – when the simple “Rock-and-Roll” would have sufficed, and carried the gag just as well.

    As someone who is known for loading-up his contemporary Disney comic book scripts with puns (‘cause I love them) it may just stand out all the more when I see a case where such a practice is better having been dialed-back.

    And, “Patty”? Wasn’t a similar character called “Annie”, or “Amber” later in the strip’s run? And she was Fred’s niece. No matter, I love seeing these strips – and how many more times can we collectively-cry-out that these wonderful strips need to be collected.

    Oh, and that second strip PERFECTLY captures the all-too-oft-occurring situation where a husband and wife have their minds set on two different things. …I know THAT from experience, too!

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