All the versions I’ve found have a top row. Some aren’t the best quality and a couple have been clipped together from different newspapers.
Mr. Slate is unnamed in his appearance on July 1. The gag is a huge rock is mistaken for an dino egg. Something interesting is the partial silhouette panel, with the lovelorn mother rendered in full while Fred and his dino digger in the background are in silhouette. Dinosaurs apparently spoke in only one syllable.
Fred and Barney quit their jobs and go into business for themselves on July 8. Instead of a drive-in, like on the cartoon series, they open a car wash. Barney’s a little dim in this one. Love the mastodon drawings.
A great end panel highlights the July 15 comic. Fred’s expression is great. The “slurpp” in the middle of the heart is imaginative. Wilma and Betty lean in a bit for a bit of variation. And in the top row, there’s a silhouette. All in all, very attractively drawn.
Fred’s drawn, on July 22, with those beady eyes George Nicholas loved using in various animated H-B shows. We get the pissed-off version of Wilma in this one. Nice Fred laughing panels. Were Italian suits gaudy in the early ‘60s? I’m missing something.
One of moments I liked on the TV Flintstones was when the trumpet blared “charge” and Wilma and Betty would shout “Charge...it!” in unison (someone will, no doubt, remember the title of the episode). They don’t do it in the July 29 comic. But they’re busy shopping. Nice set up of the gag. Wilma must still be annoyed from last week. Note the separate beds in the top row and a cameo appearance by Dino.
As usual, click on any cartoon to enlarge it.
Yowp:
ReplyDeleteThis brings back nice memories..Though these panels are a bit early for my memory..In the mid-late 1960's. "The Flintstones" Comics on Sunday were on the bottom "fold-Over" of my hometown paper, the Canton (Ohio) Repository, with Blondie on the top below the masthead..Now it's "Pajama Diaries" and "Crankshaft" on the front page..Both good comics but not the same fun as it was..
Toledo Blade opted to stick Peanuts on the front page of the Sundays for at least 30 years themselves. In the 80's the front page had Peanuts, Family Circus and some other strip on the bottom, at one point Family Circus was switched to another page and Calvin & Hobbes took over in the 90's. Not sure what it is these days, but the paper likes pimping it's locally-produced strip on the front page these days.
DeleteYowp:
ReplyDeleteMy advance apologies for using your Comments Section for a plug, but apropos to this post, the best Flintstones comic books were done by Gold Key Comics. I’ve just put up a 50th Anniversary tribute to Gold Key Comics at my Blog – and there are many, many mentions of The Flintstones. And, lots of illustrations of those great Flintstones comics, as well as lot of other stuff Gold Key published.
The comic books rarely get the coverage and attention they deserve, and I think you and your readers might enjoy this.
http://tiahblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/happy-50th-anniversary-to-gold-key.html
Again, I don’t like to commandeer your comments like this. Please feel free to delete this post, if you don’t like my having done so -- with no hard feelings whatsoever. I’ll be back, just like always.
Just wanna share it with some great H-B fans –and you’ve got some of the greatest right here.
Joe T.
Joe, it was awesome. Great work! Thanks for the heads up.
DeleteAnd, thank you right back, TCJ! I’d hoped some of the great H-B fans over here might enjoy it. In all the years, it’s hard to believe that nobody’s ever written any sort of definitive history of this stuff. Mine sure isn’t THAT. Certainly not the treatment the subject deserves!
DeleteThe epiosde, Yowp, you refer to ("CHarge'!) is "The Sweepstakes Ticket" whcih also had Fred and Barney hopping bakc and forth between making sounds of pain (a la Tex Avery). Classic episode! .Steve C.
ReplyDeleteThese comics are great! Thank you for sharing it with us :)
ReplyDelete