1 out of 5

Comedy seems to elude some people.  As does, like, commentary, and content.

The Flinstones, part of DCs revamp of Hanna Barbera characters, presents a “refined” Bedrock – as detailed by artist Steve Pugh – and an everyman Fred Flintstone who personality-less guides some cro-magnons around town as pet his boss, Mr. Slate, hoping to impress them into the quarry workforce since they don’t understand the concept of money, and thus cheap labor and yadda yadda.  Meanwhile, “witty” mash-ups of caveman-era technology with modern concepts (fair enough, part of the original ‘Stones shtick) show up in the most unimaginative and unfunny ways possible, like a “shell phone,” and, uh, vapes – no pun on that one – because fuck it, Mark Russell said, no reason to try to be clever when I’m making insightful observations on the world.

Yes, that’s what this version of Flintstones has apparently turned into, or has been attemptedly turned into, with winning lines like Fred explaining to the cro-mags, after a hated day of work, what to do with money: “Buy something someone else hated making,” or the ‘mags summary of their day in Bedrock: “…It seems like the whole point of civilization is to get someone else to do your killing for you.” Weeee, deep.  Admittedly, some of the gags and story beats might have been more tolerable if the comic wasn’t stitched together like patchwork, with zero transition or payoff from scene to scene, underlining that this was just Russell’s only way of envisioning the series, as (poor) prods at pop culture and not, like, an actual comic book with characters.  The construction felt so amateurish that I suspected Russell to be new to the biz, but, nope, he’s got some books to his name already, so there ya go.  Your dreams are achievable, kids.

Overall, the worst atrocity here is that there’s no trace of The Flinstones.  The names are used, and Barney and Wilma show up to prove they exist, but there’s zero trace of the origins here, which I do think is part of a revamp or reimagining or whatever in some way, because otherwise… you’re just using the name for attention, yeah?

Well, I guess it worked for me for one issue.  But that appeal died after a few pages.