Here is the cover of THE FLINTSTONES # 17 (Charlton Comics, Cover Date: September, 1972)...
And here is darling little granddaughter Averi (No Cover Date) but pictured on July 4th Weekend 2019...
In this case, Esther and I made sure that "life didn't imitate art", and that Avi didn't share a similar experience with poor Pebbles!
I'm on "the other side of the camera" and the shopping cart for this one - and when I saw the FLINTSTONES cover, while deep into "The Great Comics Organization and Storage Retirement Project" that has contributed some many observations to these posts, I just had to put the two together!
Awww... Now ain't that cute!
JULY 4th 2020 UPDATE: The world has changed A LOT in the past year and so has Averi...
Here she is in ANOTHER SHOPPING CART, safely and properly dressed for the rigors of life in 2020!
Awww... Now ain't that also cute - AND SAFE!
10 comments:
I believe this is the first Fred-less comic book cover, at least in the US. Later on, Charlton would place a tiny icon of either Fred or Wilma in the upper corner next to the logo, so that if Fred didn't appear in the main picture, he most likely would appear somewhere on the cover.
Examining which characters were featured on the covers of the various Flintstones comic book incarnations is a fascinating study--at least, it is if you like Flintstones comic books as much as I do! Fred appeared on every one of the Dell covers, usually accompanied by Wilma, and this tradition carried over into the first several Gold Key issues. Barney appeared on the cover of the Dell Giant that introduced the Flintstones, and then did not appear again on a cover until Gold Key issue #10 and on the Gold Key Giant "Bigger and Boulder", both of which appear to have arrived on the scene around the same time. But even though he figured prominently on many of the subsequent Gold Key covers, he was never featured regularly, as in month after month. Wilma appeared many more times than Barney on the Dell and Gold Key run, and she continued to appear frequently on the Charlton covers. Betty appeared on only five covers that I can think of--Dell Giant #48, Gold Key Giant "Bigger and Boulder," Gold Key #13 (in the story panels that begin on the cover), Gold Key #16 (the issue that introduced Bamm-Bamm, although Betty's appearance on that cover is in reference to the lead race car story, not the Bamm-Bamm origin story), and finally for the last time on #31, the Christmas issue. I have not counted Dino's cover appearances, but they were quite rare, though not as rare as those of Baby Puss, who I believe only appeared three times (Dell Giant #48, Gold Key Flintstones #7, and the beach cover, which I believe is #29, although I may be wrong on that number). Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm appeared frequently on the later Gold Key covers, usually either with Fred alone or with Fred and Barney, or with Fred and Wilma--but there are more covers featuring Fred, Barney, and Pebbles than there are of Fred and Barney with both kids. In fact, from Bamm-Bamm's cover appearances, it might appear to the uninitiated that he is Fred and Wilma's child along with Pebbles. The only cover in the Dell-Gold Key canon to depict the Flintstones and Rubbles with their respective children is the Christmas issue. (All are shown on the cover of #16, but Bamm-Bamm gets his own little box at the bottom, so I am not quite counting that.) Of course, both families also appeared together on the cover of arguably my favorite Flintstones comic book of all time--"The Flintstones at the New York World's Fair".
Also worthy of note is which covers plug stories that are inside, and which ones are purely random gag covers. And I believe only one of these random gag covers has a one-shot character that actually appears in one of the interior stories--and that is #20, which features a bird caught in Fred's net. We see the same bird later on in the final story of that issue. But this is a rare exception. Most of the gag covers have little or nothing to do with what is inside the book.
Anyway, back to the cover featured at the top of this post. The cover of Charlton #17 has a precedent in the TV series in the "Jewel Thief" episode, in which Pebbles is discovered to be loading up the grocery cart on her own initiative. Only in the TV version it is on Fred's watch--though Wilma is the one who warns Fred about their daughter's light-fingered tendencies. (Fortunately, this gets cleared up by the end of the episode, when Pebbles' taking ways get transferred to Dino instead.)
Nice to get a glimpse, actually two glimpses, of Averi--so unfortunate that her charming little face has to be masked in these uncertain days. But on the plus side, she is being kept as safe as possible.
Just to let Grandpa know...you can get a Donald/Daisy Duck face mask for Cuter-than-Pebbles on Etsy! What every well-equipped child needs to be safe *and* fashionable! Well, I guess, fashionable in Finland...or in Italy.... In any case, it sure beats a ponytail scrunchie decorated with a bone.
Wonderful, wonderful! A happy July Fourth to you, Joe, from the Pack of the Patriotic Platypi of Plattsburgh!
The same to all you Platypus-sus-sus-es, or Platypi, or whatever!
And I see you took my advice and moved to Plattsburgh! Probably a nice, cool place to be in this very hot summer!
Elaine:
There’s one VERY IMPORTANT REASON that Averi (aka “Cuter-than-Pebbles”) will never wear a Daisy, Donald, Scrooge, Minnie, Mickey, or Goofy protective face covering on MY watch!
She’s become VERY verbal, and is a non-stop chatterbox often saying startlingly clever things! Given the current climate of late 2018 and beyond, I fear that, if I cover her mouth with any of those characters, such a filter might cause her to speak far more BLANDLY, as if her formerly clever speech were now written by the dreaded E.B.! …And I don’t mean “Eega Beeva”, you can pbet your “Fresh and Modern Legendary Super-Pickax” on THAT!
And, while it *would* be a grand experiment to watch LIFE imitate ART before my very eyes, I’d never forgive myself for so retarding Averi’s amazing verbal development!
Now, if only I could find a mask for her with MY face on it…
Scarecrow:
I just checked GCD (…because you can *never* check GCD too often) and found that the first US cover without Fred was Charlton Flintstones # 6 (September, 1971) - but there’s no shame in being First Runner-Up!
We should also count Charlton Flintstones # 34 (November, 1974) as the THIRD such cover… but Fred managed to sneak onto that one as a “logo-image”!
Note that PEBBLES (with or without Wilma) is the central character of all of the Fred-less covers. With named billing on the covers of most of the Gold Key and Charlton issues (and even Gold Key’s CAVE KIDS title, along with Bamm-Bamm), she must have been quite the big draw! Going so far as to be named on the cover of Gold Key Flintstones # 13 (September, 1963) as “America’s Favorite Baby”!
“I have not counted Dino's cover appearances, but they were quite rare, though not as rare as those of Baby Puss…”
Dino more than made up for his lack of cover appearances HERE, with ISSUE # 12 being my favorite! That cover is drawn by an artist named Frank Roberge, who employed a style very similar to Gene Hazelton’s on the FLINTSTONES newspaper strip, and was another example of the type of gag you’d only see on a CHARLTON cover!
BTW, if and when I ever index this issue at GCD, I’m going to title that cover “Love Hurts!” Please, nobody steal that in the meantime, okay!
If one discounts the appearances in the series end credits (which served to immortalize the character), I wonder if Baby Puss has more appearances in the COMICS (books and/or strips) or animation?
“Nice to get a glimpse, actually two glimpses, of Averi--so unfortunate that her charming little face has to be masked in these uncertain days. But on the plus side, she is being kept as safe as possible.”
…She even makes the MASK look cute, doesn’t she?
One thing I really began to notice in the Gladstone Comics days is that Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Uncle Scrooge, Donald and Daisy are quite different characters in the classic (and classically-inspired, like Daan Jippes, William Van Horn, Don Rosa and Gladstone/Gemstone/Team Gerstein edited) comic books than they are in Disney Studio-produced projects, like merchandise, coloring and storybooks, TV shows and Jamie Diaz studios-produced DuckTales comics. Sadly, there isn't as much "classic" character merchandise around.
Deb:
I began to notice the very same thing as far back as 1964, when WDC&S was releasing each compelling and addictive chapter of “The Return of The Phantom Blot” (to what seemed like an agonizingly-slow schedule to little me) while, every afternoon, reruns of the 1950s “Mickey Mouse Club” were playing!
It seemed to me that the COMICS Mickey, as adventurer and detective, was far more likely to have an “Anything Can Happen Day” than the happy bandleader on TV.
I would imagine the original readers of Carl Barks’ prime period were thinking similar thoughts back in 1952!
…And “Team-Gerstein devotees” are thinking those thoughts even now! Some ideas take on such a “life of their own” that they actually span generations! …They most likely do that, ‘cause they never really come to pass! :-)
I'd say it's divergent evolution. The adventures of 1930's Comics Mickey are less slapsticky, but no more or less varied and exciting, than Cartoon Mickey's, who'd just as easily find himself facing mad doctors or stranded on desert island as his Gottfredson counterpart. And in the 1940's, while Donald in the cartoons rarely had long-form adventures, the depiction of his world and of his behaviour in cartoons like Modern Invention or Drip Drippy Donald was in no way inconsistent with the contemporary ten-pagers. It's really with the advent of television, and later of Disneyland, that the Mouseton and Duckburg gang had their cartoon side co-opted to become sanitized mascot while the comics were somehow spared.
At any rate, back to the original topic of the post, I concur with everyone else who said it's always a pleasure to get more glimpses of young Averi!
Achille:
Right you are!
Consider the opening of “The Mad Doctor”, and (in response?) Gottfredson creating the Phantom Blot!
Or the Jack King-directed Donald Duck cartoon “The Trial of Donald Duck” which, with just a little editing, could easily have been a Carl Barks-style “Ten-Pager” in WALT DISNEY’S COMICS AND STORIES!
“…I concur with everyone else who said it's always a pleasure to get more glimpses of young Averi!”
Right you are about THAT, too – says the World’s Proudest Grandpa!
At least that’s what my coffee mug tells me I am! …And coffee mugs never lie! …Especially the “John Wayne” one that warns everyone not to say “It’s a fine morning”, while I’m slowly and deliberately sipping coffee in order to wake up! …Yes, I really have that!
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