FLINTSTONES OF TWO WORLDS.

§ August 23rd, 2010 § Filed under Uncategorized § 14 Comments

This is The Flintstones Double Vision (September 1994), a comic book adaptation of the live action feature film starring John Goodman as Fred:


The “Double Vision” in the title refers, not to the Foreigner song, but to this comic’s particular format…while at first glance, it appears to be a 3D comic:


…in fact, it’s two different adaptations of the same story! Looking only through the blue lens, you’d see the story as drawn with the characters resembling their live action counterparts (scans grayscaled for clarity):


Looking through the red lens, you’d see the story with the characters in their traditional animated form:


And if you were to look through both lenses:


OH GOODNESS DON’T DO THAT

Anyway, you don’t see anything in 3D, despite having to use 3D glasses for this particular gimmick. You do get to read a comic with one eye squeezed shut, and boy doesn’t that sound like fun.

An interesting thing on the cover:


They use “you know who” to make it rhyme, sure, but John Goodman’s name appears nowhere in or on the book, which I thought was odd since so much attention was paid to delineating the man’s features on the cover. But then, it’s not like actors get ballyhooed on comic book adaptations all the time as it is…you’re not getting the actor, anyway. You’re getting drawings of the actor. And there’s probably some additional licensing hoohar involved if you actually use the actor’s name, maybe…I really don’t know.

On the other hand, comic book adaptations of movies are kind of a moot point when you can own the actual movie about four or five months after seeing it in theatres, like I’ve written about before.

So, The Flintstones Double Vision…bit of an oddity, and a latter day example of a comic book genre that’s very nearly gone* nowadays. Also, it doesn’t appear to be in the Overstreet Price Guide, so I’m totally pricing this at $3000, and none of you can stop me.

* Yes, I know there’s a currently running adaptation of the Star Trek movie. That’s why I said “nearly gone.”

14 Responses to “FLINTSTONES OF TWO WORLDS.”

  • I enjoyed the movie even if it is the unsexiest Betty ever! Can’t go wrong with the BC52s. But I caught a few minutes of the sequel and please tell me there was no Comic adaptation of it!

  • So you’re supposed to cover one eye the entire time as you read it? I think we have winner for the worst comic gimmick of the 90’s.

  • Another guy says:

    Let’s not forget that this gimmick appears– in a more tolerable form– within the august pages of the League’s Black Dossier!

  • De says:

    How many times does an animal appliance say, “I hate this job” in the comic?

  • A.L. Baroza says:

    Hm. I don’t remember seeing Fred Flintstone in The Black Dossier (although it would be awesome if Moore did insert him into the LOEG). Obviously, I wasn’t looking through the red.

  • philip says:

    Now I have “Helter Skelter” and “Double Vision” playing in my head simultaneously. It’s going to be an interesting day.

  • Tom K Mason says:

    Some stars are able to negotiate how their name and likeness can be used to promote movies and TV shows. I can’t say for certain if that’s the case here, but Goodman, for whatever reason, may be been able to opt out of attaching his name to this. [I once worked on a legacy property where I was told that one of the actors had “head approval” so that no artist could make his head too pointy.] Or it could be because of a tangle of rights and permissions between warring cubicles at Hanna-Barbera/Turner/WB, etc.

  • steve says:

    Tome, we need NAMES, goddammit.

  • steve says:

    Er, tom*

  • Mikester says:

    Michael-Sensei – I actually wasn’t interested in the sequel until I found out it had a live-action version of the Great Gazoo, and now there’s nothing I want to see more.

    Tom – Thanks for the info!

  • The little I saw of Gazoo, he seemed to be CGI (with Alan Cumming’s face) and he wasn’t voiced by Harvey Korman, yet HK does provide another voice, Colonel Slaghoople. If you’re brave, seek it out.

  • Nat Gertler says:

    During my time working on the Flintstones comics (while they were being published by Archie), I got to do one story playing off of how much Fred looked like Goodman. Basically, we Fred and Goodman switch places, with Fred standing in for him on the Flinstoneverse version of the Roseanne series. However, we were forbidden from doing the “stoning” up of famous people’s names or anything else that was too close to a real person, so the “Rocksanne” show was merely ‘Roxie”.

  • Michael says:

    I have that book, is it seriously worth 3 grand?????

  • Marianne Marchelitis says:

    I have the same book still in plastic and never never been open. Where is the best place to cell some thing like this