RETRO HOT PICKS! | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture

Apr23

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1981!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Apr 23, 2025

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1981!

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 44 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott Tipton and I are selecting comics that came out the week of April 23, 1981. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of April 16, 1964. 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 20 and April 26.) So, let’s set the scene: FERNANDOMANIA! Los Angeles Dodgers rookie lefty Fernando Valenzuela was taking the nation by storm. The 20-year-old Mexican on April 22 tossed his third shutout in four starts. He would only give up one run in the month of April and go on to win his first eight starts, five of them shutouts. Every kid I knew who was into baseball — which was pretty much all of us — tried to emulate his idiosyncratic, eyes-to-the-sky windup. Fernando to this day is the only player to win the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards in the same season. On April 24, President Reagan ended the grain embargo against the Soviet Union. On the same day, he sent a handwritten letter to USSR head of state Leonid Brezhnev to open a dialogue between the US and its primary Cold War adversary: “Is it possible that we have permitted ideology, political and economic philosophies, and governmental policies to keep us from considering the very real, everyday problems of peoples?” the anti-communist hardliner wrote. Reagan had written the letter weeks earlier when he was still in the hospital recuperating from the assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. The top film at the box office was John Boorman’s Arthurian Excalibur, starring Nigel Terry and Helen Mirren, and featuring three young actors who would establish major careers of their own: Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson and Gabriel Byrne. Also in theaters was a re-release of Star Wars; the steamy The Postman Always Rings Twice, starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange; Caveman, starring Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach (it’s where the two met); and the action flick Nighthawks, starring Sylvester Stallone, Billy Dee Williams and Rutger Hauer. (I would later discover it on cable. I dug it.) Oh, and then there was the Jerry Lewis vehicle Hardly Working, one of the most maligned...

Apr16

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1964!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Apr 16, 2025

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1964!

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 61 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott Tipton and I are selecting comics that came out the week of April 16, 1964. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of April 9, 1967. 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 13 and April 19.) So, let’s set the scene: BEATLEMANIA! John, Paul, George and Ringo’s appearance on Ed Sullivan in February was the beachhead. Over the next two months, the four lads from Liverpool conquered America in extraordinary fashion. This week alone, the Beatles had 13 — 13! — hits on the Billboard singles chart, including Can’t Buy Me Love at No. 1 and Twist and Shout at No. 2. The rest? Do You Want to Know a Secret, No. 5; She Loves You, No. 8; Please Please Me, No. 16; I Want to Hold Your Hand, No. 19; I Saw Her Standing There, No. 45; All My Loving, No. 48; Thank You Girl, No. 49; You Can’t Do That, No. 55; Love Me Do, No. 73; and Why, with Tony Sheridan, No. 88. (There was also the novelty song, We Love You Beatles, by the Carefrees, at No. 43.) The Fab Four also had the two LPs on the albums chart, with the first Capitol release Meet the Beatles at No. 1, and the oft-forgotten Vee-Jay release Introducing… the Beatles at No. 2. There were also The Beatles With Tony Sheridan and Their Guests, at No. 68, and Jolly What! England’s Greatest Recording Stars: The Beatles & Frank Ifield on Stage, at No. 104. (Without going down a rabbit hole, there were all sorts of contractual issues with the band early on, so the latter three are basically footnotes, though Introducing… was actually released 10 days before Capitol — the American subsidiary of the band’s British label, EMI — could get off the dime in January.) Now, get this: The band had 14 hits on the singles chart the week before, and held the top five slots on the list the week before that. But it’s not like things were slowing down. Hardly. Capitol had already put out another LP in America, The Beatles’ Second...

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