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

Jul15

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1954!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Jul 15, 2026

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1954!

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 72 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of July 15, 1954. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of July 8, 1968. Click here to check it out. (Keep in mind that comics came out on multiple days, so these are the issues that went on sale between July 12 and July 18.) So, let’s set the scene: There was Memphis and there was the rest of the world. Listeners of WHBQ, a local radio station, could not get enough of a new song by a local truck driver, backed by a couple of musicians named Scotty Moore and Bill Black. The song, That’s All Right, an uptempo cover of a 1946 tune by blues singer Arthur Crudup, had been recorded at the city’s Sun Studio on July 5, and two days later, was first played on the air by deejay Dewey Phillips (no relation to Sun’s owner, Sam Phillips). The impact was immediate, at least around town: Dewey played the song over and over as the station’s phones rang off the hook. The jockey was able to track down the 19-year-old singer and get him into his studio that night for an impromptu interview. That’s All Right (with a flip side of Blue Moon of Kentucky) would be released by Sun Records on July 19, and while his overall magnitude was small and limited, Elvis Presley’s star was born. And, to many historians, so was rock and roll. The country was becoming increasingly fascinated by a murder in suburban Cleveland. In the early morning hours of July 4, Marilyn Sheppard was bludgeoned to death in her bed. Amid a growing media frenzy, suspicion quickly centered on her husband, Dr. Sam Sheppard, who said his wife was killed by an intruder who, despite his best efforts, got away. The case — which would see Sheppard convicted, then cleared 12 years later — was one of the most infamous of the 20th century and gave rise to the belief that it inspired the TV show The Fugitive. (The show’s creator would deny it.) IN OTHER NEWS — On July 12, the Eisenhower adminstration proposed spending $50 billion for an interstate highway program that ultimately would radically alter the...

Jul08

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

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Jul 8, 2026

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

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 58 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of July 8, 1968. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of July 1, 1976. Click here to check it out. (Keep in mind that comics came out on multiple days, so these are the issues that went on sale between July 5 and July 11.) So, let’s set the scene: The nation had been beset all year by ferocious debate over Vietnam, political protests, the civil rights struggle, and rising urban crime — with the issues often mixed into combinations that led to explosive rioting and continued racist violence. Martin Luther King had been assassinated in April, and Robert Kennedy was slain only a month earlier. As the nation was having a collective nervous breakdown, the presidential campaign was in upheaval weeks before August’s Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. The Democrats were set to meet in Chicago, weeks after that. On July 11, the latest Gallup presidential poll showed that voters preferred Democratic Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey over former Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon, 46 percent to 35 percent. But if New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller scored his party’s nomination, it was a 36-36 deadlock, with 21 percent backing racist independent George Wallace. Meanwhile, a second Gallup poll said that if U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota was the Democratic nominee, he would have a 39-36 lead over Nixon and a 37-35 over Rockefeller. In short, nothing was certain. Meanwhile, King’s assassin, James Earl Ray, was in London, waiting to be extradited back to the U.S. After months of intense fighting, the battle of Khe Sanh in South Vietnam — the longest, deadliest and most controversial conflict within the wider war — had ended. From January into April, the Khe Sanh Command Base was under siege by the North Vietnamese and, amid fears that the battle would become an American version of the disastrous 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which led to the defeat of the French, President Johnson ordered the base held at all costs. The Americans and their allies were successful, but in a classic example of the twisted logic that drove decision-making, the U.S. then decided to abandon the base — and,...

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