Posted by Dan Greenfield on Jan 28, 2026
RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1960!
Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 66 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of Jan. 28, 1960. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of Jan. 21, 1985. 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 Jan. 25 and Jan. 31.) And dig that banner by Walt Grogan — new for 2026! We’ve got four of them — one each for the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Modern Ages. So, let’s set the scene: The 1960 presidential campaign had begun to take shape. This month, both John F. Kennedy, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, and Republican Vice President Richard Nixon each declared their candidacies for the nation’s highest office. Around the same time, an American defector to the Soviet Union, Lee Harvey Oswald, was welcomed by the mayor of Minsk and given a free apartment and a job as a metal worker in a radio and TV factory. But the general public neither knew — nor cared — at the time. The Cold War was filled with no shortage of covert activity and saber rattling during January: The White House was privately discussing overthrowing Cuba’s new socialist leader, Fidel Castro; the Soviets moved to reduce its armed forces in order to divert funding to nuclear weapons; and, the USSR declared the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile operational. It had also been announced that President Eisenhower would visit the Soviet Union in June, as the guest of First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. (The visit was called off after the infamous U-2 incident in May.) The civil rights movement was simmering: Joseph McNeill, a Black 17-year-old college student, was turned away Jan. 31 by a waitress at a bus terminal in Greensboro, North Carolina. When he told three friends about it, they decided to take a stand. The next day, they went to a Woolworth’s lunch counter and refused to get up until they were served. It was far from the first “sit-in” but it launched a wave of similar protests across the South and focused national attention on the injustice of segregation. IN OTHER NEWS — There was a lot of monkey business in the Space Race. On...
Read more