Exclusive DC Preview: The Flintstones #1

The world's most beloved modern stone age family is returning to the comic book racks next week in The Flintstones #1, from writer Mark Russell and artist Steve Pugh.

The Flintstones is likely the most straightforward of DC's recent animated series reinventions, with the characters still essentially looking and functioning in the same way they used to, albeit with a more contemporary sensibility. Here's the solicitation for #1:

Welcome to Bedrock, where Paleolithic humans head to dinner for a taste of artisanal mammoth after shopping at Neandertall & Big Men's Clothing, where Wilma shows her modern art, and where, if you take a plane, you could literally end up sitting ON the tail section. Join Fred and Barney as Mister Slate sends them on a mission to show some Neanderthals a night on the town in hopes of luring them into this new system called "working for a living." In Slate's Quarry, of course. Is Fred's ship about to come in? Find out when the gang finishes out the evening at the employee hot tub party, where they learn how the one percent lives here in Bedrock, home to the world's first civilization and the modern stone-age family—The Flintstones. Don't miss this extra-sized debut issue!

"There was quite an extensive design process involved," Pugh told us in an interview, the full text of which will run tomorrow. "Originally Amanda Conner did the first sketches which kind of nailed down that they were going to be the original characters in a very similar look but in a more realistic, slightly cartoon style. I think my touchstones were things like MAD magazine, where they charicature celebrities. Artists like John Severin had this wonderful way of making human beings look like cartoons. I think I was just imagining that the Flintstones were real and it was jus tseveral different artists drawing the same people. The '60s cartoons were a charicature of these people and now I'm doing my charicature of these people....The Flintstones's core idea doesn't really need updating, just the references and the approach and the maturity of the writing. But the touchstones of the family lost in this world and exploring this world, that was set and that was good. I kind of moved from that center."

The issue, the latest in DC's recent wave of Hanna Barbera reinventions, is due in comic shops and on ComiXology next Wednesday, July 6. It features a main cover by Pugh, with variants from Pugh, Daniel Hipp, Dustin Nguyen, Walter Simonson, and Ivan Reis.