Thursday, January 9, 2025

Cynical Blog Post: If I Were a Pterodactyl, I'd Want to Live in a Different Age!

From various Gold Key Comics released in the spring of 1968, comes another reason for me to be cynical...


If I could exist in ANY Earth Time Period at all, and going strictly on NAME alone, I would NOT choose the "UPPER JURASSIC" Age!  (...Go on, say it out loud, folks!) 


...And not just because I'd become a fish stick for one of these monsters!  

 EEK! 
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4 comments:

Debbie Anne said...

Thanks to Hanna-Barbara, I can’t think of pterodactyls without thinking of The Flintstones, who had an inconsistent relationship with these prehistoric creatures. In most episodes, they were used as aircraft, where passengers were warned to avoid them during refueling, as they would sometimes mistake passengers for fuel, and in other episodes, they’d be menacing giant birds who seemed to choose Fred and Barney as a potential snack frequently.

January 10, 2025 at 9:52 AM
Joe Torcivia said...

Right you are, Deb!

Hanna-Barbera has done more to keep pterodactyls alive than any other… waitaminnit, pterodactyls aren’t alive anymore!

Hanna-Barbera has done more to keep pterodactyls in the public eye than any other… wait-another-minnit, no “public eye” has ever really seen a pterodactyl!

Hanna-Barbera has done more for pterodactyl-kind than any other… wait-a-third-minnit, pterodactyls aren’t “kind”!

Aw, I give up… just enjoy this pterodactyl cover of an early Gold Key Flintstones comic with a logo larger than the illustration itself HERE

…Oh, and that cover is from the SILVER Age, not the (blush!) “Upper Jurassic Age”!

January 10, 2025 at 8:08 PM
scarecrow33 said...

Love that "EEK!"

This puts me in mind of the opening seconds of the feature film "The Man Called Flintstone" in which a more realistic pterodactyl and dinosaur than anything ever seen in the TV show, appear almost like they just stepped out of Disney's "Rite of Spring" from "Fantasia." The movie never goes back to anything this realistic again. In fact, now when I re-watch I sort of wonder what's the point? since the film barely deals with dinosaurs at all, except for leaving Dino and Hoppy at the V-E-T. Still, it can't be denied that this is a stunning way to open the film.

Interesting to note that the cover you referenced is the ONLY time that masthead/logo was ever used for a Flintstones comic book. Gosh, I wonder why they never re-used it? Hm. Could it have something to do with dividing up the name in a rather tacky manner? In any event, it's a delight to behold it again--not the first Gold Key issue, but the first "real" Gold Key issue (which any Flintstones comics fans of that particular era will understand).

Anyhow, I've read the above page a few dozen times and it has about the same effect on me as on you, Joe. Namely--EEK!

January 11, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Joe Torcivia said...

Scarecrow:

“EEK!”, of course, being one of my many tributes to Vic Lockman!

I’d say that the opening to “The Man Called Flintstone”, which I actually saw in a movie theatre (oddly, the fall after the TV series was cancelled)… it played with a Three Stooges short probably owing to the Columbia Picture connection, was done to initially and deliberately emphasize that this was a motion picture, and not a TV product. …But, that’s just my guess.

There is, as any good H-B fan should know, a realistic pterodactyl precedent in the opening of the original Jonny Quest series… though that one had only one eye.

Surely that shockingly large Flintstones logo was a one-and-done experiment, the type of which were all too common at the start of Gold Key in 1962. By 1964, all of that was over with and the good ol’ comfortable quality had returned… for three or so years, anyway.

Finally, as to that “same effect”, it’s amazing what you can find over multiple readings over a number of years! I only noticed the unfortunate naming of that prehistoric period earlier this year!

In fact, I just found “a thing” tonight in HUEY, DEWEY, AND LOUIE JUNIOR WOODCHUCKS #11 (Gold Key Comics, Cover date; October, 1971 – and a comic I read upon its first release, and a few times since) while doing research for a Fantagraphics text piece. With any luck – and editor’s willing – you’ll see it in THE COMPLETE CARL BARKS LIBRARY Volume 29 later in 2025.

…But, don’t ask me about it until then! It’s just an odd little fun thing that is even better if you discover it yourself! …And, for all I know, maybe you’ve discovered it already!

January 12, 2025 at 4:12 AM

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