Friday 6 April 2018

Yogi Bear Weekend Comics, April 1968

Fans of the Yogi Sunday comics will be a little disappointed in the poor quality of three of our entries this month. Richard Holliss, who has generously shared his colour comics from his archive, only has one Yogi this month and none for May. Our black-and-white source decided to stop scanning the weekend comic section. So what we’ve found is hit-and-miss. Fewer and fewer papers were carrying Yogi and the Flintstones in their weekend sections as more and more ads were purchased (one was for some Campbell Soup noodle product aimed at kids), bumping space from comics.

The colour tabloid is from April 28, 1968. It would seem more appropriate to have published it around St. Patrick’s Day given that a leprechaun is a co-star, but maybe that was too obvious.

Quick Draw and Huck make an appearance in the top row of the April 7, 1968 comic. They’re not part of the plot but it’s nice to see them there.

Boo Boo doesn’t make much of an appearance this month, but we’ve got rangers on April 14th and 21st (including an angry obese one that Doug Young probably would have voiced if it had been a TV cartoon) and Bill Hanna’s beloved Boy Scouts on the 7th. I must admit the house painting story is a little too surreal for Yogi; the bear always had motivation for what he did instead of just doing something silly. Perhaps I’m missing something. I like how Yogi makes an appearance in the window of the final panel on the 21st.


April 7, 1968


April 14, 1968


April 21, 1968


April 28, 1968

5 comments:

  1. Isn't that Boo Boo who says "What do you want with Phil's sheepdog, Yogi?" in the first comic? :)

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  2. These materials were drawn by Pete Alvarado, Iwao Takamoto and Jerry Eisenberg.

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  3. In the third box on the top comic strip, Yogi's dialogue is "Tomorrow? Sure, Mister Ranger, Sir...I'll be glad to take over for you."

    At least, this is my reasonable guess. There is just enough space for those exact words to fit. Enlarging improves the visibility, but parts of that speech just disappear completely. (I printed it out and wrote in the dialogue, and it matches with the markings that are there.)

    This is, however, in no way a complaint! As I have stated for years now, this monthly "fix" of Yogi and Flintstones comics is one of the great joys of life!

    Thanks, Yowp, and thanks, Richard for making this possible for yet another little while!

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  4. And, of all things, they appear to have used “Iron Hand Jones” (…or a reasonable facsimile of the character, who’d not been seen in six or more years) instead of Ranger Smith in the surreal “House Painting” strip!

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    1. There were a couple of Sunday comics over the years that featured a foul-tempered ranger that was very much like Iron Hand Jones, so I guess he was in the back of their minds.
      As a character, he works really well as a change from Smith, but this comic leaves me thinking "Huh?" Smith or a superintendent or a park shop owner would have worked.

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