The gag in the February 1st comic is cute. You’ll notice, unlike the Yogi cartoons, there are plain backgrounds at times in the Flintstone comics. Some small panels only have an off-white colour. This one also has a silhouette panel.
The February 8th comic and the next two include bedroom scenes. Notice how the row of houses exists solely for the gag. We all know Fred’s house has a garage and a little more front law. Note the TV antennas. It really IS the Stone Age. Dino makes his only appearance this month.
Drip Number One shows up on September 15th. So does Pops.
Drip Number Two on September 22nd turns out to be post-nasal drip. Maybe that mastodon caught Fred’s flu from earlier in the month. Other than Pebbles in a window, this is the only time we see her this month.
Click on any of the comics to enlarge them.
My thanks to Richard Holliss for supplying the colour versions.
Looking back over the many Flintstone strips you’ve posted, I see that sometime between August of 1968 and August of 1970 the artist veered from the model sheets for Wilma and gave her cheeks similar to Pebbles. Personally, I like it better that way.
ReplyDeleteFred, Wilma, Pebbles and Dino have been revised & modified to such a degree that I don't really miss seeing Barney & Betty in this comic strips. The Flintstone family themselves are entertaining enough, here, to not recreate/pastiche TV cartoon scripts or jokes. Pops isn't as combative a presence as Wilma's mother, so he can appear more often and not be a pain to take. A similar thing happens in the Yogi strips where including the Ranger's wife fleshes out his character a teensy bit. I wished the later cartoons had followed this approach, especially once the original cast members start fading out and they couldn't just coast on voices as a way of saying they're just as "good" as the original series..which wasn't entirely perfect.
ReplyDeleteFred, Wilma, Pebbles and Dino have been revised & modified to such a degree that I don't really miss seeing Barney & Betty in this comic strips. The Flintstone family themselves are entertaining enough, here, to not recreate/pastiche TV cartoon scripts or jokes. Pops isn't as combative a presence as Wilma's mother, so he can appear more often and not be a pain to take. A similar thing happens in the Yogi strips where including the Ranger's wife fleshes out his character a teensy bit. I wished the later cartoons had followed this approach, especially once the original cast members start fading out and they couldn't just coast on voices as a way of saying they're just as "good" as the original series..which wasn't entirely perfect.
ReplyDeleteThe “flu gag” would have been still more effective, certainly for those papers that didn’t carry the top row, if ROW TWO began with the generic boss sending Fred home – and not wasting valuable space on the “3 car-travel panels”, that could have better made the point of Fred being shunned by everyone for his contagion!
ReplyDeleteFor the “throwaway” top row, Fred exhibiting some symptoms, and being called by the generic boss, would have sufficed!
Yeah, yeah… I know! Everybody’s an editor! Sheesh!