Posted By Dan Greenfield on Apr 17, 2024 | 2 comments

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 34 years ago…

This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott Tipton and I are selecting comics that came out the week of April 17, 1990.

Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of April 10, 1973. Click here to check it out.

(Keep in mind that comics came out on multiple days, so these are technically the comics that went on sale between April 14 and April 20.)

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Rose before the fall…

So, let’s set the scene: Baseball non-Hall of Famer Pete Rose fell further into disgrace April 20 when he pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges. Three months later, he would be sentenced to prison. He’d already been banned from baseball by this time and remains on the outside looking in at Cooperstown. He is still baseball’s all-time leader in hits.

… and after.

The high-flying ’80s were over and it was time to pay the tab. Junk-bond king Michael Milken — one of the inspirations for Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko — pleaded guilty April 14 to fraud-related charges. He agreed to pay $600 million in fines and restitution and was later sentenced to 10 years in jail. (He served just under two years for cooperating against his former colleagues and for good behavior.) Earlier in the month, Ivan Boesky, another dirty trader who inspired Gekko and who informed on Milken, was released from federal custody.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the top-performing movie at the box office. Other movies in theaters included The Hunt for Red October, starring Sean Connery, and Pretty Woman, the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold rom-com that made Julia Roberts, who’d previously been nominated for an Oscar for Steel Magnolias, a superstar.

Hits on TV included America’s Funniest Home Videos, Cheers, A Different World, The Cosby Show and Roseanne. But David Lynch cultists and connoisseurs of fine television were already obsessed with Twin Peaks, which debuted April 8. There was nothing else like it on TV and that first season remains a highlight of Lynch’s illustrious career. Kyle MacLachlan was hilariously weird as pie-and-coffee-loving FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper.

In response to Saturday Night Live’s well-earned reputation as a mostly white sketch show, In Living Color premiered April 15 on Fox and became a cultural force. Created by Keenen Ivory Wayans, it made stars of siblings Damon, Kim, Shawn and Marlon, and turned performers such as Jamie Foxx, Jim Carrey, Tommy Davidson and David Alan Grier into household names. The show’s dance troupe, The Fly Girls, was led by Rosie Perez and featured a young Jennifer Lopez.

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Superman #44, DC. Superman and Batman teaming up post-Crisis was pretty rare, so it was something of an event at this point. The story ran three consecutive weeks, starting here and leading into Adventures of Superman #467 and Action Comics #654. (The Triangle Era was coming, though we didn’t know that yet.)

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Batman #448, DC. A three-part crossover with Detective Comics that featured three different pencillers: Jim Aparo (this issue), Norm Breyfogle and Mark Bright. (Breyfogle did all the covers.) This is the arc that introduced Harold into Batman’s universe. Whatever happened to him?

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Star Trek #9, DC. I was a big fan of DC’s Star Trek run. Good storytelling. Very readable.

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Guardians of the Galaxy #1, Marvel. The Guardians get their first eponymous title, courtesy of Jim Valentino, who brought a lighter touch to the series.