Wednesday 15 July 2015

Flintstones Comics, July 1965

America’s fight to check the spread of Communism resulted in four pages in the Chicago Tribune 50 years ago this month listing the number of young men killed in Vietnam. Another page enumerated those missing in action. So it was that Americans (and others) could use a few laughs brought to them courtesy of that Modern Stone Age Family in the Tribune and other papers.

It seems whoever was writing the “Pebbles and the Postman” mini-series got tired of it as the postman disappears from the daily comics for July 1965. What do we get instead?

● More “What will they think of next?” punchlines (July 7, 19, 28)
● Fun with baseball (July 8, 12, 22, 23, kind of 24)
● Golf (July 17, 26)
● Bowling (July 13)
● Silhouette drawing (July 9)
● Nostalgia isn’t just for 90s kids. It’s for infants (July 14)
● Is it a kangaroo or a shark-jumping hopperoo? (July 15)
● An animal commenting on a situation, just like in the TV cartoons. (July 28)

Betty appears twice (July 5, 10) as does Dino (July 16, 23). No Baby Puss. Some nicely-rendered incidental character animals as usual; nice perspective on the dinosaur in the July 5th comic.



On to the Sunday comics...



Wonder what happened to those dancing girls (animated by Carlo Vinci) in the Pebbles’ birthday party episode? Well, in the weekend comics 50 years ago this month, they were in a nightclub (July 25th). I love how all the employees at the El Moe-Rocko are wearing fezzes, including a stork at the front door (a stork?!?). Maybe the nicest panel of the month is the last one from July 11th with the amusement park mini-volcanos. Did Fred smoke a pipe in the TV show? (See July 18th comic). And the Bang! Zowie! Zap! in the opening panel of the July 4th comic pre-dates the Batman TV series which popularised such action words amongst those of us who didn’t read super-hero comic books.

Click on any of the comics to enlarge them.

3 comments:

  1. This is the complete material from the Flintstones comic strip, which was carried in the newspapers from the whole world (via McNaught Syndicate) in July 1965.
    This complete material features the daily strips drawn by Gene Hazelton and the Sunday pages drawn by Dick "Bick" Bickenbach.
    Among the Flintstones daily strips drawn by Gene Hazelton, it's included the daily strip from July 9, 1965 (that one in which Fred and Wilma go to the laundromat with Pebbles), which I saw in two links from the Web: in the Patrick Owsley's blog (http://powsley.blogspot.com), more exactly in a selection of the Flintstones daily strips drawn by Gene Hazelton in the 60s, which's located in the following link: http://powsley.blogspot.com/2008/07/flintstones-comic-strips-by-gene.html; and in the site from the Hogan's Alley magazine (http://cartoonician.com), in an article refering to the Flintstones series, which's located in the following link: http://cartoonician.com/excavating-bedrock-reminiscences-of-the-flintstones.
    Enjoy to give a peek in these two links.

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    1. Fixing: the Flintstones Sunday pages from July 1965 also were drawn by the legendary Gene Hazelton.


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  2. It's nice to see Bamm-Bamm making an appearance in the 7-11 Sunday strip. He can also be seen in silhouette in the final panel of that strip. Wilma is pushing Pebbles on a toy dinosaur in the first panel, but a moment later she is carrying Pebbles and the dino-toy has disappeared.

    In the 7-18 Sunday strip Pebbles considers going to work for the Bedrock Gravel Company. In the episode "Daddy's Little Helper" she did just that, when as a teen she got a job as Mr. Slate's secretary!

    The octopus in the 7-21 daily strip is almost identical to the octopus caregiver at the Bedrock World's Fair nursery in the "Time Machine" episode.

    Wilma's thwarted attempt to keep Fred at home in the 7-13 daily seems a bit extreme, and maybe a little out of character.

    The girls at the nightclub definitely look like the Boulderettes!

    I enjoy Bickenbach's work as well as Hazelton's--Bickenbach is more "on-model" but Hazelton adds some creative touches and is great with facial expressions. For the most part the strip rings true to the TV series, even giving us a few glimpses into daily life that the series never showed, but it definitely has its own style and quirks, which are always fun.

    Thanks again for posting these! They're a great summertime treat, but they're a treat any time of the year!

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