Flintstones Weekend Comics, March 1964

Life in the Stone Age was pretty primitive, so it’s no wonder things broke down. At least, that’s the fate that greeted our favourite denizens of Bedrock this this month 50 years ago.

Finding an on-line version of a newspaper that published the Flintstones’ Sunday comics for March 1964 was an adventure in itself. I still can’t locate a full comic for the end of the month (newspapers occasionally dropped a comic and substituted paid advertising, such as half-page cartoons pushing Kellogg’s cereal and a contest). So this is the best I can do. It’s a shame that some publisher hasn’t realised there’s money to be made in collating the old Yogi and Flintstones Sunday comics in a book.


I don’t know why Betty’s annoyed in the March 1st comic. After all, the leak can’t be fixed for a month. What else does she expect Barney to do. If he’d try to fix it himself, Fred would horn in and, well, you can probably hear the Hoyt Curtin music in the background as disaster strikes.

For those of you who get worked up over whether Fred and Barney work together, you’ll notice Fred has a hard-hat and Barney doesn’t. Then again, maybe Barney has an office job.


Fred Flintstones endorsed products for Miles Labs on TV, but apparently they didn’t have a product strong enough to deal with Fred’s sinus trouble. The artwork here’s very nice, especially the happy bull moose that pop up in the final panel, and the sound waves that pour out of Fred in the bottom row, far left. And Fred’s body language is nice in the panel where he and Barney are walking. Fred’s stooped over, so you can tell he’s not well. This is from March 8th.


A TV antenna? Say, that is Stone Age! The comic from March 15th (not too visible) has nice reaction drawings of Dino about what’s going on. If this were the TV, the record player bird (played by Mel Blanc) would comment.


March 22nd has a nice little story. I wish the scan of this was better because I’d like to get a better look at the dopey expression on the dinosaur in the last panel of the middle row. Fred looks kind of dozy himself. This comic may solve the mystery of where Baby Puss went. He seems to have adopted the ranger station as his home, judging by the opening panel. Does anyone know if Dick Bickenbach drew this?


Fred has a new address in the March 29th comic, which builds up to one of those “Soft Fred” moments. Pebbles’ thought balloons would appear more often as the years passed. This is the best version I can find of this comic, sorry.

Click on each comic to expand it. Consider these Flintstones posts as a kind of bonus, as it’s becoming difficult to find complete, viewable versions of the Sunday comics to pass on.