Charlton Summer! HANNA BARBERA SUMMER PICNIC, 1971

HANNA BARBERA SUMMER PICNIC, released in July of 1971 is actually HANNA BARBERA PARADE #3. This becomes confusing when sorting out the timelines of the title. In fact although it is issue #3, it was released months before issues 1 and 2 (September and November). This is also the case of Charlton's other two giant sized H-B Summer issues, The Flintstones, and Yogi Bear, which we will discuss in later posts.

Charlton had only recently acquired the H-B license and was keen to promote it in a big way. While this issue contains a good portion of Ray Dirgo art, who is most closely associated with Charlton's H-B characters, there also appears to be a few leftover Gold Key stories in the mix (with artists whose style I recognize, but cannot place a name to at the moment), as well as at least one story (Magilla Gorilla) by Phil Mendez.
Charlton was branching out with coloring books at this time and many of their regular titles reflected this by including some of the coloring and activity pages. This was an economical ploy by not only promoting the coloring book division, but also saved on commissioning new art, and especially the fact that no color separations and extra inks were needed. The coloring and activity pages included here, with the exception of the Dirgo pieces, are most likely by Tony Tallarico.