Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jul 2, 2025 | 3 comments

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 69 years ago…

This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott Tipton and I are selecting comics that came out the week of July 2, 1956.

Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of June 25, 1960. 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 29 and July 5.)

So, let’s set the stage: BOMBSHELL WEDDING! It was a romance nobody expected but on June 29, Marilyn Monroe, the ultimate movie sex symbol (who was a lot brainier than the public knew), married Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller at Westchester County Courthouse in White Plains, N.Y. (about a mile from 13th Dimension’s subterranean headquarters).

It was a marriage made for headlines: Miller had just eight days earlier testified before the red-baiting House Un-American Activities Committee but declined to name names, and Monroe, of course, was one of the most recognizable people in the world.

After their civil ceremony, the two had a Jewish wedding July 1 at Miller’s Roxbury, Connecticut, home. Their marriage (Monroe’s third and Miller’s second) was tempestuous almost from the start and they would divorce five years later.

THE KING ASCENDANT! If Americans weren’t talking about Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, they were talking about the scandalous young singer Elvis Presley, who shocked the nation a month earlier with a gyrating, thrusting, sexually charged performance of Hound Dog on June 5’s The Milton Berle Show. The TV appearance had tongues wagging, girls and women swooning, and no shortage of pearls being clutched. Whether they loved him or hated him, he was a star.

On July 1, ever torn between his primal impulses and his desire to please, he appeared on The Steve Allen Show — and chastely sang Hound Dog to a basset hound while he wore a tuxedo. Elvis absolutely hated the gag, later calling it “the most ridiculous appearance I ever did.” But he shook it off and the next day, July 2, he recorded Hound Dog and Don’t Be Cruel in New York City.

Two days later, on the Fourth of July, he headlined a charity concert in Memphis, where fans had waited outside since morning to try to sit as close as they could to the stage. (The next day, he visited in the hospital a young girl who’d been injured with her mother in a car crash as they’d left a picnic to get home to prepare for the show.)

IN OTHER NEWS

— On June 29, President Eisenhower signed the landmark Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which created 41,000 miles of interstate highways that dramatically altered the look — and nature — of the American landscape forevermore.

— Eisenhower was up for re-election and he and Vice President Richard Nixon would face Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver in the fall, a rematch of their 1952 contest.

— Nixon was on his way to Southeast Asia where, on July 6, he would visit South Vietnam and declare that “the march of Communism has been halted.” Not so fast, Dick.

The top movie in the country was Trapeze, starring Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Gina Lollobrigida. Other big movies in theaters included the John Ford/John Wayne classic The Searchers; Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, starring James Stewart and Doris Day; and two that just opened: the John Huston-directed Moby Dick, starring Gregory Peck and Orson Welles, and the marvelous The King and I, which made an international star of Yul Brynner.

On the other hand, there was a tight, 84-minute heist movie that was a box office flop that opened in May but was likely still floating around here and there: The Killing, the first major Hollywood film directed by Stanley Kubrick, may have bombed at the box office, but it caught critics’ eyes — and went on to become known as one of the greatest noir films ever made.

Popular TV shows included The $64,000 Question, The Ed Sullivan Show, I Love Lucy, What’s My Line, Dragnet and Gunsmoke — with the latter two also enjoying success as popular radio shows. (Our Miss Brooks and The New Edgar Bergen Hour were also top radio programs.)

Baseball’s All-Star Game was in the offing (set for July 10 in Washington) and the players selected included some of the best who ever lived, with no less than 18 of them ultimately making the Hall of Fame, such as: Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford of the New York Yankees; Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox; Willie Mays of the New York Giants; Hank Aaron and Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves; Frank Robinson of the Cincinnati Redlegs; Duke Snider and Roy Campanella of the Brooklyn Dodgers; and Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Even the managers became Hall of Famers — the Yankees’ Casey Stengel and the Dodgers’ Walter Alston.

Yogi, Whitey and the Mick

Elvis’ Heartbreak Hotel was already his first gold record and I Want You, I Need You, I Love You was also a hit. His eponymous debut album dominated the charts from May 5 to July 7.

Other popular singles included The Wayward Wind, with two versions — one by Gogi Grant and one by Tex Ritter — vying for listeners’ ears; the medley Moonglow and Theme from “Picnic,” by Morris Stoloff; I’ll Be Home, by Pat Boone; Why Do Fools Fall in Love, by the Teenagers featuring Frankie Lymon; and Doris Day’s signature Que Será, Será (Whatever Will Be, Will Be), from The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Harry Belafonte had two major albums — Belafonte and Calypso; the Chairman of the Board had Sinatra’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!; and two soundtracks were on turntables across the country: the Oklahoma! movie soundtrack and the original Broadway cast recording for My Fair Lady.

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Dan Greenfield, editor, 13th Dimension

Showcase #4, DC. A huge turning point in the history of comics — the beginning of the Silver Age! The brainchild of editor Julius Schwartz, the ish introduced a new Flash — in two stories by Robert Kanigher, Carmine Infantino, Joe Kubert and John Broome — and jumpstarted the superhero genre, which had been moribund excerpt for mainstays like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. The impact wasn’t immediate but within five years, DC had made superheroes so popular that Martin Goodman, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby followed suit across town and launched the Marvel Age. It was on.

Scott adds: First appearance of the Barry Allen Flash and the birth of the Silver Age of Comics! Carmine Infantino’s more modern, fluid art style set the stage for all of DC’s Silver Age revivals to come, from Hal Jordan to Katar Hol to Ray Palmer.

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Mad #29, EC. A watershed issue: Al Feldstein’s first as editor-in-chief, and Don Martin’s first as a contributor. Feldstein took the mag, which was already ascendant under Harvey Kurtzman, and pushed it to a new level of notoriety and cultural impact over the next three decades or so. Wally Wood was still around but over the next several issues, Feldstein brought in Norman Mingo, Kelly Freas, Mort Drucker and Joe Orlando, among others.

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Katy Keene #30, Archie. That’s not very nice, Katy.

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Our Army at War #50, DC. Kanigher, Ross Andru, Mike Esposito, Jerry Grandenetti, Bob Haney and Russ Heath led the platoon in this one.

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Dear Heart #16, Ajax. This just might be the first romance comic I’ve seen that features a worrisome, pining dude on the cover, absent-mindedly stroking the cockpit of his model plane.

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Scott Tipton, contributor-at-large, 13th Dimension

Mr. District Attorney #53, DC. This comic has everything.

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Forbidden Worlds #46, ACG. How long does he figure that blowtorch will work underwater? Time for a new strategy, guy.

Dan adds: Then again, if it’s an acetylene torch…

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Spellbound #30, Atlas. Cool, moody cover here by the great Bill Everett.

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MORE

— RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale The Week of June 25 — in 1960! Click here.

— RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale The Week of June 18 — in 1963! Click here.

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Primary comics sources: Mike’s Amazing World of Comics, the Grand Comics Database.