Posted By Dan Greenfield on Apr 10, 2024 | 6 comments

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 51 years ago…

This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott Tipton and I are selecting comics that came out the week of April 10, 1973.

Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of April 3, 1969. 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 April 7 and April 13.)

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So, let’s set the scene: All the President’s Men were cracking. On April 6, White House counsel John Dean began cooperating with Watergate prosecutors, and on April 9, The New York Times reported that Watergate burglar James McCord told the Senate Watergate Committee that the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) had made cash payoffs to the men who broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. (By the end of the month, the scandal would intensify substantially with the resignations of Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, key aide John Ehrlichman, Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, Acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray and political operative/Commerce Dept. official Jeb Stuart Magruder, and the firing of Dean.)

New Yorkers enjoyed their new skyline: The World Trade Center had just officially opened April 4 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. At the time, they were the two tallest buildings in the world, 110 stories and 1,350 feet high.

Picasso’s 1937 masterpiece Guernica

An artist to the very end: On April 8, one of the absolute giants of the arts, Pablo Picasso, died of heart failure at his home in France. Among the the most storied and celebrated artists in the annals of human history, Picasso and his wife had friends over for dinner the previous evening before Picasso went to his home studio to work on a painting, then went to bed in the early morning hours. He had been scheduled to bring new works to a showing. (Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.)

On April 10, the Kansas City Royals opened their beautiful new ballpark, Royals Stadium, with a 12-1 defeat of the Texas Rangers. The stadium, once an almost pastoral place to see a baseball game, has since been “refurbished” to within an inch of its charm and is now scheduled to be replaced. A shame.

If you were headed to the movies, my goodness did you have a great selection to choose from. Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter opened April 6, followed three days later by Paper Moon, starring Ryan O’Neal and his young daughter Tatum O’Neal. (I had such a crush on her three years later in The Bad New Bears.) The two classics joined Cabaret, The Poseidon Adventure, The Getaway and the still notorious Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, who later spoke of how emotionally scarring it was to make the movie.

At the same time, the Hong Kong martial arts flick Five Fingers of Death, starring Lo Lieh and produced by the Shaw Brothers, launched the chopsocky phenomenon on U.S. shores. The film was released in America by Warner Bros. and capitalized on the success of the studio’s TV series Kung Fu, which became a hit after its 1972 debut. In many tangible ways, filmmaking would never be the same. Just ask Quentin Tarantino.

Now, if you were at your local movie theater, it’s likely you saw this poster for the upcoming Charlton Heston movie featuring Edward G. Robinson, Soylent Green:

Since the movie took place in 2022, chances are your breakfast this morning was people.

On TV, the hits included Hawaii Five-O, All in the Family, Maude, The Waltons, The Carol Burnett Show and the aforementioned Kung Fu. (By the way, remember how we posted in last week’s column about the Smothers Brothers’ row with CBS in 1969? Well, April 6 is the date a federal court ruled in the comedy duo’s favor, awarding them $776,300, equivalent to about $5.4 million today.)

Topping the Billboard 100 was Vicki Lawrence’s The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia, which, you may not realize, is about a sociopathic woman who lets her brother hang for crimes she committed. At No. 3 was the ubiquitous Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree, by Tony Orlando and Dawn, which I swear was played every other song on the radio for, like the next two years.

The best selling album was Diana Ross’ Lady Sings the Blues soundtrack, at No. 6 was Pink Floyd’s epochal The Dark Side of the Moon, but down at No. 10 was Elvis Presley’s Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite. The concert took place in January but wasn’t shown in the U.S. until April 4, well after the album’s release.

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Amazing Spider-Man #122, Marvel. The comic that scarred me for life (although I read it in a Marvel Tales reprint). The Goblin’s demise is haunting. One of the greatest Spider-Man comics ever.

Dan adds: No knock on Spider-Gwen or anything, but I’d like to imagine a comics world where both Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborn remained dead. I think there’s actually richer storytelling potential there. This was such a meaningful, powerful storyline, I really believe it should have been allowed to stand on its own. Our pal Peter Bosch wrote a great piece on this for last year’s 50th anniversary. Click here to check it out. It’s excellent.

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Thor #213, Marvel. A lot of Marvel’s covers around this time are almost visually overstimulating: too many characters, too many captions, too many blurbs.

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Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #7, DC Comics. That is a big hand.

Dan adds: Forget Godzilla x Kong. How about Kamandi x Kong?

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Sub-Mariner #63, Marvel. Remember what I said about that Thor cover? Goes double here.

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Dan Greenfield, editor, 13th Dimension

Captain America #163, Marvel. Writer Steve Englehart had the reins on Captain America and had been faced with keeping relevant a star-spangled hero who seemed at odds with public political sentiment. By this time in Englehart’s tenure, he was having Cap confronting social issues of the day. Six issues later, the seminal, Watergate-infused Secret Empire storyline began.

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100-Page Super Spectacular DC-18, DC. Superman is the cover boy but the ish also features both the Golden Age and Silver/Bronze Age Atoms, Hourman, TNT and Dyna-Mite, and Captain Triumph. The highlight, though? The reprint of the classic The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue.

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MORE

— RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale The Week of  April 3 — in 1969! Click here.

— RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale The Week of March 27 — in 1965! Click here.

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