Wednesday 17 January 2018

Flintstones Weekend Comics, January 1968

The forecast for Bedrock—rain or snow. At least, that’s the variety we get in the Flintstones weekend comics 50 years ago this month.

Richard Holliss supplied the colour versions; apparently there were some comics in the paper he clipped that were in a red tone only.


Fred wore a hat in the comics on occasion; I don’t recall him wearing one very often on the TV show. Here in the January 4th comic we see that golf is omnipresent in Fred’s mind, even when he doesn’t speak.


Aw. Fred’s being a good daddy in the January 11th comic. Apparently the reader has seen enough of these that they’re supposed to recognise who Pops is, though he never appeared in the TV series.


This is the best version I can find of the January 21st comic; my sources have dried up again (in other words, papers kept dropping the two Hanna-Barbera strips as the ‘60s wore on). You can’t see the mastodon bookends very well. The story is good, definitely not directed at kids.


The temperature has been warming up in Bedrock. It went from snow to rain and now it’s warm enough to make ice unstable in the January 28th. The old know-it-all Fred is in this comic. I like the opening panel. Pops shows up at the end. Sploot!

Poor Dino isn’t around this month. They didn’t showcase him very much in the comics. Too bad. Maybe next month.

7 comments:

  1. One thing I've noticed. Bamm Bamm is rarely, if ever in these comics..

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  2. WARNING! WARNING! Style guide violation in final strip!* - No footwear on any of the characters.

    *per Iwao Takamoto

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    Replies
    1. LOL You had to roast poor Iwao....anyway glad to see no "Pebbles and Bamm Bamm Show" yet..

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    2. In wintery weather, long sleeves (and also leggings(?)) are an expected fashion.

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  3. Seeing the clerk in the Flintstones Sunday page from January 4, 1968 (drawn by Gene Hazelton), it's quite the Dick Bickenbach's design.

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  4. Enjoy the Ed Benedict designs a bit longer. By 1971 or so, it's clear that the Takamoto version was being favored, even though Hazleton was still the artist. It had to be the PEBBLES & BAMM-BAMM influence. (It was off-putting enough to me that I never even considered the strip for printing in The Menomonee Falls Guardian in '73, even though I'd loved it in the early-to-mid '60s when it ran in The Milwaukee Journal. Too bad, since now it would be nice to have a nice clean record of the strip from those later years...)

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