Remembering the great Flintstones comic strip

Arnold Buckley



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

   I came across some old Flintstone Sunday funnies from the sixties and don't quite remember these comics in the seven ties and eighties. I was not even aware that Hanna and Barbara did their work in the papers and I was surprised by how good the detail was if not the storylines and gags of the few strips I ran across circa the late sixties. This strip reminded me a lot of the old classic Popeye comic strips with the retro drawing and question mark captions throughout the comic strip. the coloring and drawing was of top quality and it is interesting that this comic strip seemed to be in the papers the same time the cartoon show was broadcasting through the networks on Sunday morning and in syndication on afternoon kids television. Perhaps this was an attempt by the industry to try to get more youth into looking through the papers and to be devoted customers to their regional monopoly paper but the truth is one does not think of the Flintstones as a comic strip and it appears this strip did not last long in the newspapers. You would see Fred in some situations that the cartoon version would never dare put out towards children such as the time Fred got so inebriated with alcohol and he was so fucked up that he kept passing out. While most of thestorylines were boring and not classical in the sense of the cartoon series the comic strip of the Flintstones was much more entertaining than the crap in the papers at the time and from the looks of it the strip was much more detailed and well drawn than much of the shit that survives in syndication to this day.