The girl in question has a bone in her hair, perhaps showing a Gene Hazelton influence in those pre-Pebbles days. The March 4 comic also has the script form of “Hanna-Barbera” used in TV cartoons of the day. The comics seem to have varied between this and using a form featuring the Tabitha-like typeface found in animated cartoons the year before.
The pre-historic lizard in the first panel is nice bonus.
After he got dancing lessons from Arthur Quarry in a first-season episode (1961), Fred learned how to dance the Dinosaur Twist in the March 11 weekend comic. At least the instructor isn’t called “Arthur Murrayrock,” a creatively-bankrupt name if ever I heard one (sorry, I’m not a fan of the Frantic episode where Murrayrock appears).
The grouchy, bombastic Fred makes an appearance March 18. Nice looking mastodon in that first panel. A shame not all papers ran the top row.
I really like the reflection panel in the March 25 cartoon. The confused turtle is a nice little addition. Interestingly, dinosaurs were featured in all four Sunday comics of the month, but only as ancillary characters in the first three.
As usual, you can click on each comic to make it bigger.
Actually... wasn't it Arthur Murrayrock who wanted to learn the Frantic from Fred in a dream sequence?
ReplyDeleteThe little girl is Amber, the very youbg, 10-11 looking babysitter who is in an earlier strip you've featured, Yowp./
ReplyDeleteJoe, you ae right about Arthur Murryrock-it was the "Shindig" parody, the one where Fred's banged his foot and goes into his dance [to borrow an old 1935 Warner Bros.cartoon title]. That episode has its up[s and downs due to the story line,pretty painful [I recently sprained my ankle, it's somewhat less funny, that episode, the Frantic - "Shinrock a Go-Go.' That pain-propelling one to fame was used in one of the last Warner cartoons, with Cool Cat, "Bugged by t bee", with a self-explantory title.]
Nice colleciton of comics.
Steve C.
Hi, Joe. Yeah, the plot points of some of these cartoons get mushed in my head sometimes. The Shinrock episode has always been a low-light for me. It signalled creativity was reduced to adding "rock" or "stone" after every name and that, somehow, was supposed to be funny. Fred-as-a-teen-idol was funnier when he was Hi Fye.
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