Sunday 18 July 2021

Flintstones Weekend Comics, January 1965

You don’t think of dramatic artwork when you think of the Flintstones comic strips. But occasionally it shines through, such as in the colour comic that appeared in newspapers on January 3, 1965 (a day earlier in Canada).

The five comics below are, unfortunately, black and white scans, but look at the composition in the long panel in the second row below. It outshines the final panel, which is a lovely piece of work, too.

Late note: Reader Keith Semmel correctly points out the last line is a play on the Tareyton cigarette commercials of the day, with the grammatically incorrect slogan "Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch" and pictures of people with one black eye.



The long panel in the second row of the January 10th comic is a nice bit of drawing as well, with a bit of perspective as the animal cases curl around on the left.



Betty appears for the second time in three weekends on January 17th; a bit of a rarity. The ending is a pun. I wonder how this would work in foreign languages.



For some reason, Fred says “That’s an incinerator!” when it’s clearly marked as such. There’s really no need to label it if he’s going to say it. I’m not sure why the eggs equate to a small fortune as it’s not set up in the comic. This is from January 24th. Is that Don Messick I hear squawking?



The month concludes on January 31st with no appearance of Dino. All five comics revolve around Fred, none around Pebbles As we’ve mentioned before, Mr. Slate was mainly a TV character. Fred had different bosses in the newspaper comics.



Click on any of the comics to make them larger.

3 comments:

  1. Forgive my pestering, but will you please, PLEASE give your thoughts on HBO Max’s Jellystone! when it comes out? I’ve literally been dying to know your thoughts on it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. F & B ought to be sporting shredded garments and claw marks rather than being unscathed save for black eyes (?) in the first strip's concluding panel, but, yes, gorgeous cartooning all around--There really should be a book collection.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Keith and Yowp, for the addenum.

      It also illustrates why I think its a bad idea to build gags around contemporary pop culture, especially something as ephemeral as advertising.

      Delete