“Because if civilization is going to last, if it’s going to amount to anything more than just a place to watch TV and get cheap snake meat, it will only be because we’ve learned to do one thing. To care for people who mean nothing to us.”
Yabba-Dabba-Doo it’s The Flintstones for the modern age! Mark Russell teams up with Steve Pugh for a scathing satire on civilization in general, with 12 issues plus an annual with Booster Gold rounding out this mostly fantastic hardcover collection. The Flintstones follows the characters we know and love from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, and puts a new modern twist on them, with Bedrock being a satire for basically every civilization that followed it. Russell brings his standard flair of writing to each issue, with each one dealing with a different conflict or issue in Bedrock that can be seen in modern society.
This book seems to have a lot of positive talk around it, but I honestly had some issues while reading this. I feel like the main problem was there wasn’t a particular story that stood out to me besides Leisure Class. The rest of the stories were fine, but there was nothing in here that I was blown away after reading. As others have said, even Russell himself, this book can be super heavy-handed sometimes, and not in a good way. Some of it is funny like the dude lecturing the kids about economics from weird places, but other stories, like the consumerism one, are just a little too much for me. The Booster Gold crossover was also super weak and frankly just not very good.
Even with the issues I had, I did still enjoy this for the most part, and the fact it even exists means it just automatically gets a bit of a pass from me. It has charm and I always enjoy a solid satire, especially if it manages to be funny, which this book is. Gags fill up the panels with Steve Pugh contributing just as much as Russell to making this book work. While the characters don’t necessarily feel like they are growing, they are still likable enough to carry this story forward and keep the reader engaged, but at the same time, while I do enjoy what Russell has to say with this book, I just wish there was a little more to the stories as well as each of the characters and their personality. The standout arc is probably the one between a bowling ball and vacuum cleaner.
Overall though, I liked The Flintstones. I didn’t love it or have my socks blown off as others seemed to, but I did think it was a solid enough read that was just lacking some stronger stories and characterizations of the characters to make me feel more connected to this mostly interesting world. Mark Russell and Steve Pugh work well together and have undeniably made something awesome and wholly unique here though, which definitely plays into how high this review is scored.