Posted by Dan Greenfield on Dec 24, 2025
RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1945!
Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 80 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of Dec. 24, 1945. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of Dec. 17, 1950. Click here to check it out. (Keep in mind that comics came out on multiple days, so these are the comics that went on sale between Dec. 21 and Dec. 27.) So, let’s set the scene for our annual RETRO HOT PICKS Christmas foray deep into the Golden Age: World War II ended only four months earlier and on Dec. 21 one of its greatest American military leaders, Gen. George S. Patton, died from complications resulting from a Dec. 9 car accident in Germany that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Patton, 60, was a deeply complicated man. Known as “Old Blood and Guts,” he was a profoundly successful commander but he was also controversial, known for slapping two soldiers suffering from what was then called “shell shock,” a precursor to PTSD. Worse, when the war was over, Patton, who was rabidly anti-Semitic and showed no sympathy for Holocaust victims, dragged his feet on the de-Nazification of Germany, showing support for his former adversaries. Called out by the press, Patton gave a pass to the Germans, saying that most people with the experience to manage the defeated country’s infrastructure had been compelled to join the Nazis, whom he compared to Democrats and Republicans. Amid the uproar, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, ordered Patton to hold a press conference to correct himself. Instead, Patton doubled down and Eisenhower relieved him of duty. Old Blood and Guts was assigned to command a unit that was compiling a history of the war in Europe. Patton was buried in Luxembourg on Christmas Eve. IN OTHER NEWS — On Dec. 24, the Sodder children disappeared in Fayetteville, West Virginia, giving rise to a weird, decades-long mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Naturally, it was featured on the superb podcast Casefile (Case 192). — It’s not like it was Esperanto or anything, but on Dec. 26, playwright George Bernard Shaw proposed a new phonetic alphabet, with just one sign for every sound. It didn’t take. — The creation of the United Nations was well under way, with...
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