Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 45 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of Dec. 10, 1980. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of Dec. 3, 1989. 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 Dec. 7. and Dec. 13.) So, let’s set the scene: John Lennon, the former Beatle and one of the most prominent countercultural forces in the world, was shot dead the night of Dec. 8 as he was coming home to the Dakota apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Lennon, 40, and his wife, Yoko Ono, had gotten out of a limo and were walking toward the building’s entrance when a lunatic named Mark David Chapman shot him four times in the back. Just hours earlier, Lennon had autographed for Chapman a copy of his recently released album Double Fantasy.  The response to Lennon’s death was immense and immediate, with crowds forming outside the Dakota and Roosevelt Hospital, where the ex-Beatle was pronounced dead. As the news spread, fans around the world gathered publicly and privately in a widespread outpouring of grief. Lennon was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, N.Y., the day aftter he was killed. Ono said there would be no funeral and instead asked for 10 minutes of silence globally on Dec. 14. In addition to other events that day, 225,000 people gathered at the Naumberg Bandshell in Central Park, and 30,000 people assembled in Lennon’s hometown of Liverpool. Chapman’s motives were muddled and ultimately unimportant and pointless. He was a profoundly mentally ill man, who now sits behind bars in an upstate Dutchess County prison, where he’s visited by his wife, Gloria, who has stood by him for the 45 years since the slaying. He’s been denied parole 14 times, most recently this year. He’s 70 years old. Sales of Double Fantasy and other Lennon and Beatles music skyrocketed. Both the album and the upbeat — but bittersweet in retrospect — single (Just Like) Starting Over topped the charts in the US and the UK after the murder. Imagine, from 1971, hit No. 1 in the UK in January 1981 and Happy Xmas (War Is...