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Sep20

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1985!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Sep 20, 2023

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1985!

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 38 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott Tipton and I are selecting comics that came out the week of Sept. 20, 1985. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of Sept. 13, 1979. 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 Sept. 17 and Sept. 23.) So, let’s set the scene: Ronald Reagan was in his second term and there was some Cold War drama: On Sept. 21, CIA case officer Edward Lee Howard fled to Russia after being outed as a KGB agent. His escape was classic cloak-and-dagger stuff: According to The New York Times, “Mary Howard helped her husband escape by driving home from the (New Mexico) desert with a dummy made of clothes and a wig stand in the front seat, fooling the agent watching them. … Mrs. Howard further aided her husband by playing a tape recording of his voice over their telephone to deceive F.B.I. agents who were tapping the phone.” Howard claimed he was innocent and in 2022 died under mysterious circumstances because Russia. Internationally, on Sept. 19, an 8.1 earthquake in Mexico City devastated the area. The death toll has long been in dispute, with estimates ranging from 5,000 to 45,000. (The most commonly cited estimates are around 10,000.) The most popular movie in the U.S. was Back to the Future, which was wrapping up an eight-week run at the top of the box office. On a smaller scale, the hilarious, cult-fave Martin Scorsese flick After Hours, starring Griffin Dunne as a New York guy who just wants to get home but keeps getting thwarted in increasingly over-the-top fashion, had opened Sept. 13. The Cosby Show was No. 1 in the Nielsens (of course), but there was a new NBC hit on the block. The beloved The Golden Girls — starring Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty — had debuted Sept. 14. The biggest story in music was the first Farm Aid benefit concert, Sept. 22, in Champaign, Illinois. It was organized by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp, and performers included Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, B.B. King, Emmylou Harris and Hoyt Axton, among others. Dire Straits’...

Sep13

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1979!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Sep 13, 2023

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1979!

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 Sept. 13, 1979. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of Sept. 6, 1989. 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 Sept. 10 and Sept. 16.) So, let’s set the scene: Jimmy Carter was in his only presidential term. On Sept. 15, he collapsed from heat exhaustion while participating in a 10K run at Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland. He received an IV saline solution while lying on the ground, then was driven to Camp David to recover. Kind of a metaphor for his whole presidency, I hate to say. One of the greatest sports movies of all time — North Dallas Forty, starring Nick Nolte and Mac Davis, a roman a clef about the NFL in general and the Dallas Cowboys specifically — led the box office. Nolte’s opening wake-up scene is one for the ages and the trope would become his specialty. I highly recommend the book by the late Peter Gent, by the way. The iconoclastic Gent, who also wrote the screenplay, was a former Cowboys and Giants wide receiver, and his insights are stark, raw and wildly entertaining. The book is, amazingly, out of print but I’m gonna go track down a copy. Haven’t read it in far too long. Meanwhile, on Sept. 14, Quadrophenia, based on the Who’s album, opened in theaters. The band was also on tour and this week it began its U.S. leg with performances at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, N.J., and New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Other movies on the silver screen included Apocalypse Now, one of the greatest ever made, and Monty Python’s Life of Brian, one of the funniest ever made. (Though, I still far prefer Holy Grail.) On television, ESPN was in its very first week. Programming was scarce and a light shadow of what it is today but it’s the place where I later discovered the offbeat and charming Canadian Football League. Go Alouettes! Charlie’s Angels was the No. 1 show on TV, by the way. The cast this time around was Jaclyn...

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