Flintstones Weekend Comics, April 1963

A familiar idea and some great shapes highlight the Flintstones Sunday comics (Saturday in Canada) from 50 years ago this month. Fortunately, only one of the story lines involves Pebbles. Alas, Baby Puss doesn’t even rate a background-of-the-first-panel appearance.



You loved the Flintstone Flyer (né the Barney Copter). Now, Fred’s come up with his own flying machine in the April 7th comic. I wish I could find decent versions of these on-line to get a better look at the composition. I like how the first panel in the bottom row has the perspective looking up at the action and the next panel’s looking down. It’s followed by a silhouette panel and the crashed copter. Dino makes an incidental appearance in the opening drawing.

By the way, as a comparison, here’s the Flintstone Flyer by the wonderful Carlo Vinci. I’d love to know if Ed Benedict designed it.





“Eugene” rates a mention in the list of Water Buffalo members on April 14th. The coincidence between the name and the fact Gene Hazelton was in charge of the H-B comics is too great. So perhaps he came up with the story. It’s not his artwork; the way he draws eyes on the characters is quite distinctive and you can already see them in the Flintstones daily comics published at this time. You guess is as good as mine who the other Water Buffalos are named for (maybe one is Clarke Mallery).



The highlights of the April 21st and 28th comics are the great shapes; the tied-up dinosaur in the former and the toothy mouth in the latter. Well, and Fred’s expressions in the latter, too. Mr. Slate doesn’t exist yet; Fred has an unnamed boss.

Click on any of the comics to enlarge them. It seems most of the papers available to me on-line didn’t pick up the Flintstones Sunday comics. There are a lot more Yogis out there.