Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 40 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott Tipton and I are selecting comics that came out the week of Sept. 27, 1983. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of Sept. 20, 1985. 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 Sept. 24 and Sept. 30.) So, let’s set the scene: The world almost ended. No, really, it did. On Sept. 26, amid severe Cold War tensions — the USSR had shot down a South Korean passenger jet earlier in the month — a Soviet nuclear early warning system signaled the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile, with four more behind it, coming from the United States. (Hawkish Ronald Reagan was president.) The warnings were suspected by Soviet Air Defense Forces Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov to be a false alarm. Rather than immediately relaying the warning to his superiors, he decided to wait for corroborating evidence — and none arrived. His remarkable stoicism in the face of potential annihilation is seen as having prevented a retaliatory strike that would almost certainly have led to World War III and global nuclear devastation. An investigation found the system had, yes, malfunctioned. The terrifying incident remained unknown to the public until 1998. Meanwhile, life in an unaware America went on. The top movie at the box office was the charming but dated Mr. Mom, starring Michael Keaton. (It was this role that primarily chagrined fans when his casting as Batman was announced several years later.) Released this week was Toronto Film Festival darling The Big Chill, an enormously influential drama/comedy that holds up very well 40 years later. Despite its flaws, I love it now as I loved it then. Watched it a million times at the movie theater I worked at. On television, the big news was the premiere of AfterMASH (which I just realized is a play on the word “aftermath”). The first episode, which aired Sept. 26, ranked first in the Nielsens, as did the following week’s installment. The series, which showed what happened after the Korean War to Col. Potter, Klinger and Father Mulcahy, is now largely forgotten and overtly ignored by many MASH fans. It actually...