Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jun 10, 2026 | 6 comments

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 62 years ago…

This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of June 10, 1964.

Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of June 3, 1955. 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 June 7 and June 13.)

So, let’s set the scene: The Civil Rights Movement was in the forefront, here and internationally. On June 12, South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela and seven others were sentenced to life in prison at the close of the infamous Rivonia Trial because of their efforts opposing the apartheid South African government. Mandela and the other Black defendants were shipped to Robben Island, while the white defendant was sent to Pretoria.

Mandela would serve 18 years of his sentence at Robben Island, and nine elsewhere, before he would be freed after 27 years.

Stateside, on June 10, the U.S. Senate voted 71-29 to end the longest filibuster in history. Racist senators from Southern states and elsewhere had staged lengthy speeches for 75 days, opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which sought to outlaw discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia finished the last of the speeches just shy of 10 a.m., 14 hours and 13 minutes after he started. The vote cleared the way for the bill to be approved.

Three days later, the first 300 volunteers for the Freedom Summer project to register Black voters in Mississippi — largely driven by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee — arrived at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. The volunteers were trained by members of various organizations, including the NAACP.

The ranks ultimately numbered roughly 1,000 and were about 90 percent white; one-third to one-half were Jewish. (When they soon arrived in Mississippi, they were met with heinous acts of violence that included assaults, church bombings and murder — most notably three young men killed by Klansmen. More than 1,000 locals and volunteers would be arrested over the 10 weeks of the Freedom Summer.)

In public, President Johnson was making a show of how important it was that the U.S. support South Vietnam. The previous week, he held a press conference and said that the nation was “bound by solemn commitments” to defend the Asian nation against the Communists. He referred to a 1954 letter from President Eisenhower to South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem promising to protect the latter’s government.

Behind closed doors, however, things were far less certain. It wouldn’t be revealed for years but on June 5, Henry Cabot Lodge, the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam, sent a secret cable to Johnson warning against further deployment to fight the Viet Cong. Doing so would be a “venture of unlimited possibilities which could put us onto a slope along which we slide into a bottomless pit.”

Johnson ignored him.

IN OTHER NEWS

— November’s Kennedy assassination was fresh in the American consciousness and on June 7, Jack Ruby, the man who killed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, testified before the Warren Commission, while at the Dallas County Jail. Ruby’s testimony would be made public along with the rest of the Warren Commission’s report later in the year.

— On June 11, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 took effect, prohibiting wage discrimination.

— Writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters were prepping for a — literal and figurative — trip from California to the New York World’s Fair. They would leave June 14 on their bus Furthur to experience the American road while high on LSD. (It was still legal.) The voyage would eventually be immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s bestseller The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

The sexually charged The Carpetbaggers, starring George Peppard and based on the sleazy Harold Robbins novel, was a big hit at the movies, despite lousy reviews. That Carroll Baker shot a nude scene for it — even though it was left out of the US release — could not possibly have been a factor. Right?

Other hits included The Pink Panther, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and the swingingest Elvis movie of them all — Viva Las Vegas, co-starring the sensational Ann-Margret.

But wait! There was also the second James Bond film — From Russia With Love, which my father thought was the best one.

Rerun season had begun, but the most popular TV shows included The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Petticoat Junction, and The Andy Griffith Show.

John, Paul, George… and Jimmie! Having already conquered America, the Beatles were on their first — and, it would turn out, only — world tour. But Ringo was down for the count with tonsillitis, so he was replaced for the first eight shows by the square-jawed Jimmie Nicol. This week, the Fab Three Plus One would play in Kowloon and Adelaide, Australia. Naturally, it was madness, screaming, swooning and fainting everywhere they went. (Ringo would return June 14, in Melbourne. Nicol would fade into obscurity.)

In the U.S., the band’s first two American album releases — Meet the Beatles and The Beatles’ Second Album — were huge hits, the latter only having just been eclipsed at the top by the original Broadway cast recording of Hello, Dolly!, starring Carol Channing. Their two best-selling singles of the moment were Love Me Do and P.S. I Love You.

[The top 45 was Chapel of Love, by the Dixie Cups, while Jan and Dean’s hot-rod anthem The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena) was released June 8.] But it’s not like Beatlemania was fading or anything. Far from it: the lads from Liverpool’s first movie was due out in July, and with it, another album.

While the Beatles were enjoying extraordinary success, another wave of the British Invasion had begun — but with a lot less hysteria. Thousands of howling fans greeted the Fab Four when they arrived at JFK Airport in New York back in February, but when the Rolling Stones landed June 1, they were welcomed by… about 500. Four days later, they began their first American tour in San Bernardino, California, while promoting their initial U.S. album release, The Rolling Stones: England’s Newest Hit Makers. (Other stops included such towns as Excelsior, Minnesota, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.)

On June 13, they appeared on ABC’s The Hollywood Palace. (It was recorded earlier; they were in Omaha that day.) Guest host Dean Martin continuously belittled the band and snidely commented, “Their hair is not long. It’s just smaller foreheads and higher eyebrows.”

But it wasn’t a total flop: There were signs that Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts were onto something in the States.

On June 10, the band visited Chess Studios in Chicago and over two days, met Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon and Buddy Guy. They also recorded their next single, a cover of Bobby Womack’s It’s All Over Now, plus other material, including Time Is on My Side, also a cover. While in L.A., they also met arranger Jack Nitzsche, who would become one of their most important collaborators in the ’60s.

Finally, the next week, they’d end the tour with two raucous shows at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Time was on their side.

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Dan Greenfield, editor, 13th Dimension

Justice League of America #29, DC. Folks, this was one helluva week for comics, one of the best I’ve ever seen. This issue marked the second-ever JLA-JSA team-up, but what elevates it beyond that is it features the introduction of Earth-Three and the Crime Syndicate of America. The Crime Syndicate is one of my fave villain teams — perhaps my fave overall. Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky and Bernard Sachs (behind a Sekowsky-Murphy Anderson cover) expanded the DC Multiverse and enriched it by bringing aboard Ultraman, Owlman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick and Power Ring.

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The Amazing Spider-Man #16, Marvel. Webhead and Hornhead meet for the first time!

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Tales of Suspense #57, Marvel. Hawkeye makes his debut! And Black Widow’s got him doing her evil Russian bidding!

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The Avengers #7, Marvel. Continuing the first appearance of the Masters of Evil from the previous issue. Plus, Rick Jones plays Single Dead Sidekick and puts on Bucky’s outfit for the first time — promptly pissing off an understandably weirded-out Captain America.

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Marvel Tales Annual #1, Marvel. Good lord, if you knew nothing of the Marvel universe, this was almost all you needed to get caught up — reprinting the first Spider-Man, Hulk, Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Sgt. Fury, Iron Man, and Thor stories. For a quarter!

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Batman #165, DC. The third month of Batman’s New Look! To this day, this is one of the most exciting periods in the Caped Crusader’s history. The funny thing is, this cover is similar to what we’d already seen in the Silver Age — namely 1960’s Batman #130 and 1962’s Batman #146 — but that fresh coat of paint by Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella made all the difference.

Scott adds: This is another cover that I only ever saw in black-and-white, in my copy of Batman: From the ’30s to the ’70s, and it always freaked me out.

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Space Family Robinson #9, Gold Key. The Robinson family is lost in space, more than a year before Lost in Space. Also: Kloblops.

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Young Romance #131, DC. John Romita, still at DC. (Gene Colan, too!)

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Blue Beetle #2, Charlton. The Silver Age days of Dan Garrett.

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

Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, Marvel. Best annual in comics ever? You can make the argument.

Dan adds: You certainly can, Scott, What a killer book. Spidey for the first time runs the gauntlet of the Sinister Six, defeating each villain — Doc Ock, Electro, Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, Sandman and the Vulture — one by one. Not just that, it’s a smorgasbord of Steve Ditko pin-ups and features, such as profiles of all of Spider-Man’s adversaries — even including the burglar who killed Uncle Ben — as well as beautifully illustrated explainers of the webslinger’s powers and tech. It’s one of the greatest single comic books I’ve ever read.

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Fantastic Four #30, Marvel. Am I the only Fantastic Four fan who likes Diablo? Diablo gets no love.

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Sgt. Fury #9, Marvel. I must have missed this chapter in my history books.

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MORE

— RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale The Week of June 3 — in 1955! Click here.

— RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale The Week of May 27 — in 1979! Click here.

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Comics sources: Mike’s Amazing World of Comics and the Grand Comics Database.