Wednesday 16 January 2019

Flintstones Weekend Comics, January 1970

A variety of stories fill the Flintstones’ Sunday comics on this month in 1970 (we can’t do 50 years ago this month as the comics aren’t available in readable form). Betty returns for one comic, Pops is in another. No Dino. I’ve given up hope of seeing Baby Puss again.

Blow up any of the comics by clicking on them.


January 4, 1970. Barney was pretty easy-going in the cartoon series; I can’t picture a snowman likeness bothering him unless maybe Fred had an insulting sign attached to it. I like the first panel’s composition. A snowman in the background is covered by the title in the mid-ground which is partly covered by Pebbles in the foreground.


January 11, 1970. Some newspapers would only publish the bottom two rows of a three-row comic. If they did in this case, readers would only miss an unrelated gag. You’d figure everything back in the Stone Age would taste like wild game.


January 18, 1970. Betty’s head doesn’t move.


January 25, 1970. Fred’s back working day shift. His boss is not Mr. Slate in the comics for whatever reason. Observe the boss is smoking a cigar. I imagine the writer grew up close to the era where tycoons smoked cigars and wore suits with vests and pocket watches. I don’t remember many people outside of George Burns puffing on a cigar by 1970. Richard Holliss supplied the colour cartoon from his collection.

6 comments:

  1. Materials 100% Gene Hazelton.
    Inked by Lee Hooper.

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  2. Mr. Granite was one of the names of one of Fred's bosses before Mr. Slate was developed. An early version of Mr. Slate is introduced as J. J. Granite in the Bus Driver episode. There's also an early version of Fred's boss, I think his name was Mr. Boulder, who looks similar to the boss depicted above. In this era, none of the print versions of the Flintstones depicted the TV version of Mr. Slate, although he was well established as Fred's boss by this point.

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    Replies
    1. I think Mr. Slate was not introduced in the Flintstones comics until the late 70's, when Marvel was publishing the Hanna-Barbera characters. I may be wrong, but Mr. Slate never appeared in the Flintstones comic books previously published by Gold Key and Charlton.

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  3. Glad NOT to be seeing "teenage Pebbles era" Flintstones!(not to mention other late 60s-early 70s stuff). Very good.

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  4. And the top one, the snowman one where Fred and Barney are fighitng,m it VERY funhny!

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  5. Mike Tiefenbacher18 January 2019 at 17:40

    Forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but the beardless Fred and Barney look too young to be married to Wilma and Betty. I still wonder why Hazleton decided to change their design.

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