Regular readers will know we have been reprinting “50-years-ago-this-month” weekend newspaper comics for Yogi Bear and the Flintstones, generously supplied from the personal collection of Richard Holliss in England and supplemented by whatever we could find in newspapers on-line. Richard’s missing a few years and all our on-line sources for 1968 dried up, so we had to curtail things. However, we can skip to 1970 and bring you the comics from that year.
Before we do it, we do have a few from 1968 from Richard to pass along for months we skipped.
May 19, 1968. A time of protest in the United States. Naturally, it’s reflected in the comics. The quotes are quasi-Biblical. You’ll see some plain backgrounds in some of the panels. Nice to see Betty make an appearance. (1968 was the year that her voice, Bea Benaderet, died of cancer).
June 16, 1968. The dream sequence is a nice idea (in TV cartoons, it’s used too often as a cop-out as in “Surprise! It’s all a dream!”). The car looks a little like a drag racer to me because of the larger back wheels. Mr. Slate isn’t Fred’s boss here, and I don’t think he ever was in the comics.
August 11, 1968. A bee in someone’s mouth that doesn’t sting? Evidently the bee never talked to Bill Hanna about making “Tee For Two” at MGM (Tom got stung by a mouthful of them).
Now for August 1970. No Dino (let alone Baby Puss), no Rubbles. We get Fred’s dad in two of the five comics this month. And a live mastodon that Fred has mounted on the wall, in addition to the flat Earth.
August 2, 1970.
August 9, 1970.
August 16, 1970.
August 23, 1970.
August 30, 1970. I still can’t think of an explanation for this one. Pebbles definitely needs a new writer.
The black-and-white comic is from one of our on-line sources which decided to go back to scanning its comics page after skipping a couple of years. The rest are from the Holliss archive. You can click on them to make them bigger.
So somewhere between May and June of '68 is when Gene Hazleton decided to use a depilatory on Fred's face to remove that pesky beard line which served the animators of most H-B characters (animals and human) in good stead all those years by easily isolating the only portion of the character that was moving onscreen. Sadly, it also made Fred look like Fred; without it, he looks like a college-age version of himself. Along with coloring his shirt blue instead of orange, it's part of the reason I lost interest in the '70s version of the strip.
ReplyDelete1000% correct ! it's too bad because the artwork is really good ! was this by someone from the HB studio ? probably not. if it followed the classic beard line & orange shirt-throw in the real boss slate they'd be a lot better. though 1970 must've been a vapid time in bedrock. i think "the pebbles & bamm bamm show" started in 1971. so the cereal commercials were the only stone age animation after "a man called flintstone" til '71 ? did HB studio do the cereal commercials ?
DeleteBut "the pebbles and bamm bamm" was far as you could get from old=schpol, and clasic HB or Flintstones..(reminding me of the Scooby/Josie Meddling kids style and production design)...I doubt we'll ever see the spin off Pebbles/BVamm Bamm comnics or any seventies comics here..though the original show has always been good mining stuff for these comics...though fall 1970 presented a very condescending (IMHO) and different view of Hanna-Barbera cartoons with all dear, due, respect to all of the parties involved...:(
DeleteYou're right, Yowp. I may have missed it, but I don't remember seeing Mr. Slate in the comics.
ReplyDeleteAfter perusing all of the Flintstones comic strips posted on this blog and elsewhere, I have not seen Mr. Slate to make an appearance in the newspaper comics. However, the name Slate was used at least once. In one later 70s comic strip, an old school friend sees Wilma and greets her as "Wilma Slate" meaning her maiden name was Slate, which it never was in the TV series. In that strip, Wilma rolls her eyes and agrees it has been a long time since they've met. (In the series, Wilma's old friends referred to her as "Wilma Pebble." In later seasons, Wilma's mother was referred to as "Mrs. Slaghoople". With two possibilities in place already, the suggestion of her maiden name being "Slate" seems way off.)
DeleteIn the Gold Key comic books, Fred's boss was named Mr. Slater and he had a different design than the Mr. Slate of the TV version. This same comic book version of Fred's boss persisted into the early Charlton issues as well. Only when the comics were produced by Marvel and later by DC Comics did Mr. Slate finally appear under his usual name and in his more familiar form.
Materials 100% Gene Hazelton, as always!
ReplyDeleteThe Flintstones Sunday pages from June 16, 1968 and August 16, 1970 (both drawn by the legendary Gene Hazelton) are included in the Comicrazys blog (http://comicrazys.wordpress.com).
ReplyDeletenice sweater on betty
ReplyDeleteHave you noticed which, in 1968, Gene Hazelton gave a psychedelic touch in the Flintstones comic strip?
ReplyDeleteThere are several Hanna-Barbera series from the late 60s which brought psychedelic animation effects, such as Shazzan (1967) and The Herculoids (1967) - more exactly in the episodes The Invaders (the Sta-Lak's cyborgs being shot by the Thundro's energy stones) and The Queen Skorra (in the scene which the queen Skorra launches a missile equipped with the mega-shield in the skies from Amzot [the planet where the Herculoids live], and when the missile explodes, it activates the mega-shield [thru of a psychedelic light], which would force the exit of the Herculoids from their planet).
There also was some Hanna-Barbera series from the late 60s which brought a psychedelic look, such as The Banana Splits Adventure Hour (1968) and The Catanooga Cats (1969).
The Flintstones Sunday pages from August 1970 (drawn by the legendary Gene Hazelton), were inked by Lee Hooper, who was from Disney and also colaborated inking the Hanna-Barbera comics from the Marvel Comics period (1977-79), including the Flintstones completed stories, drawn by Dick "Bick" Bickenbach at this same period.
ReplyDelete