Wednesday 15 April 2015

Flintstones Comics, April 1965

The preponderance of Pebbles and Postman continued in the Flintstones daily comics 50 years ago this month (this post actually starts with the comic of March 29, 1965). The writer(s) started using variations on the routine. They’re in the March 30, April 8, April 15 and April 23 comics.

We get a nicely drawn collection of mastodons and there’s a two-horned rhinosaurus-saurus as the gag in the March 29 comic.

Other observations about the dailies.

● Not only is Baby Puss forgotten this month, Dino doesn’t appear either.
● Betty makes only one appearance (April 30).
● Another “what will they think of next” final panel (April 12).
● TV antennas are still worth a gag (April 1).
● Love the snake ruler (April 2) and the huge Awakk bird (April 5).
● Fred and Barney would appear to work together at the quarry (April 3).
● The painter tied up Wilma?! (April 16).
● Fred has an eye for the ladies (April 10).
● It took me a while to figure out but that’s a golf club Fred wrapped around the lamp (April 22).

The weeks start on March 29th, April 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th.



Now, the Sunday comics (April 4, 11, 18 and 25). I really love the first one; nicely rendered animals, flora and volcanoes. Whoever wrote it has a sense of irony, too. The animals became extinct anyway; there’s nothing “the city” could do about it. I like the idea of Fred talking about a fire extinguisher in the April 11th comic while he’s smoking a pipe. How about that last row in the April 18th comic? The remnants of the bird/Flintmobile collision are pretty imaginative. And Dino musters a “Gleef!” in the April 25th comic. These are re-uploads to replace earlier, incomplete comics in the original post.



You should be able to click on each set to enlarge it.

5 comments:

  1. Attention, HB-fans from the whole world!

    Here's the complete material of the Flintstones comic strip, carried in the newspapers from the whole world (via McNaught Syndicate) in April 1965, bringing the daily strips drawn by Gene Hazelton and the Sunday pages drawn by Dick "Bick" Bickenbach (with exception of the Sunday page from April 11, 1965, which was drawn by Gene Hazelton).

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  2. Seeing the Flintstones daily strip from April 1st, 1965 (drawn by Gene Hazelton), I could notice that the Fred's friend looks like Arnold Stang (the Top Cat's eternal voice in English).

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  3. In the April 18th comic strip, Betty looks like she's grown a pony tail...but it's the final "s" in "Flintstones."

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  4. Seeing the Flintstones daily strip from March 29, 1965 (drawn by Gene Hazelton) - that one in which Fred & Barney go visiting the Hindu Swami -, I have a sensation of listening a song of Ravi Shankar (and his sitar).

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  5. Seeing the Wilma's worried expression in the Flintstones Sunday page from April 11, 1965 (drawn by Gene Hazelton), it makes me reminding of June Lockhart (Maureen Robinson from the Irwin Allen's Lost in Space series).

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