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

Jun07

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1968!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Jun 7, 2023

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1968!

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 55 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott Tipton and I are selecting comics that came out the week of June 7, 1968. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of May 31, 1988. 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 June 4 and June 10.) — So, let’s set the scene: America in 1968 was a nation in turmoil and this week the threadbare fabric that held the country together suffered another severe fissure: Robert F. Kennedy — who was looking to succeed President Lyndon Johnson — on June 4 won the California Democratic presidential primary and, moments after thanking his supporters shortly past midnight June 5, was shot while walking through a corridor at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Five other people were wounded and police arrested Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Jordanian citizen living in the United States, for the shooting. Kennedy, who never regained consciousness, died in the early morning hours of June 6. Sirhan Sirhan is still alive in prison, age 79. RFK’s assassination, following his brother President John F. Kennedy’s murder in 1963 and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s slaying in April 1968, was a watershed moment in American history and a defining event of the 1960s in general and ’68 in particular. On June 8, the same day RFK was buried in Arlington National Cemetery next to his brother’s grave, King assassin James Earl Ray was arrested at Heathrow Airport in London after 65 days on the run. The monumental nature of RFK’s assassination dwarfed one of the strangest episodes of the era: On June 3, Valerie Solanas, a self-described radical feminist who had founded the Society for Cutting Up Men — aka SCUM — shot pop artist Andy Warhol several times at The Factory in New York City. Warhol would recover but the shooting haunted him for the rest of his life. Solanas served only a three-year sentence and after her 1971 release began stalking Warhol and others by telephone. She was arrested in November of that year and was institutionalized several more times. Solanas died in 1988 at 52; Warhol, at 58, died a year earlier. Amid all...

May31

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1988!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on May 31, 2023

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1988!

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 35 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott Tipton and I are selecting comics that came out the week of May 31, 1988. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of May 24, 1956. 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 May 28 and June 3.) So, let’s set the scene: The Reagan ’80s were in their final months but Vice President George H.W. Bush — we just called him George Bush back then — would roll to the GOP nomination. For the Democrats, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was the presumptive nominee at this point, with Jesse Jackson holding on, effectively to ensure that Black interests were represented in the party’s platform come the convention in July. Crocodile Dundee II blew off the box office doors with a huge Memorial Day weekend debut. On June 3, a far superior film, Penny Marshall’s Big, starring Tom Hanks (aka Shazam! without the superpowers) opened to critical and commercial acclaim. The movie underscored Hanks’ broad appeal as a major Hollywood player and the role of Josh Baskin would earn him his first Oscar nomination. The more things change: Hollywood was stifled by a writers strike and it was rerun season, as well. Either way, NBC was a ratings powerhouse, locking up the first seven slots in the Nielsens. Among the most popular shows were Night Court, The Cosby Show, Cheers and A Different World. But the TV landscape was shifting: The execrable Morton Downey Jr. Show went into national syndication, an early sign that pop culture and civility were devolving before our very eyes. I’m not a music snob — I swear I’m not — but there’s not a single hit among the Billboard 100 leaders that I like. It just wasn’t my time for popular music. The No. 1 single was George Michael’s One More Try, a song I cannot recall off the top of my head. (By this time, I was soaked in classic rock from the ’60s and ’70s and learning about great blues artists like Taj Mahal.) To find a song I genuinely like, you have to go all the way down to No. 29, for Midnight...

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