Posted By Dan Greenfield on May 27, 2026 | 5 comments

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 47 years ago…

This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of May 27, 1979.

Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of May 20, 1951. 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 May 24 and May 30.)

View from O’Hare

So, let’s set the scene: On May 25, American Airlines Flight 191 crashed just outside Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, killing all 271 onboard, plus two more on the ground. To this date, it remains the the deadliest airplane accident in American history.

The Los Angeles-bound DC-10’s left engine fell off right after takeoff at 3:04 p.m. local time, thanks to a three-inch bolt on the engine mounting that was weakened by metal fatigue. The jet rolled right and crashed into a trailer park next to the airport.

American Airlines Flight 191 crash site

As I’ve written before, airline crashes were pretty common back then. Five days later, commuter carrier Downeast Airlines Flight 46 crashed when it approached its landing in Rockland, Maine. 17 of 18 on board were killed, and it’s still the deadliest air crash ever in Maine.

Also, on May 25, a 6-year-old boy named Etan Patz disappeared while walking to school in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. Young kids walking to school on their own was typical back then, remember? But Patz’s case became such a big deal — not only in New York, but nationally (he was one of the first children to be put on a milk carton) — that it was a major factor in parents’ keeping a tighter rein on their kids. Because of the awareness raised by Patz’s vanishing, President Ronald Reagan would four years later declare May 25 National Missing Children’s Day, which eventually became an international observance.

Patz’s case would remain unsolved for decades.

—

IN OTHER NEWS

— The United Kingdom was under historic new leadership: Earlier in the month, Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher became the nation’s first woman prime minister.

— On May 28, a 13-year-old boy named Thomas Lundgren of Reseda, California, was found dead and mutilated in Agoura. It later became clear that he was the first victim of the Freeway Killer, who was eventually identified as William Bonin. Bonin was convicted of 14 murders, but confessed to 21, and is a suspect in more cases. (He attacked boys and men between 1968 and 1980 in southern California and while stationed in Vietnam.)

Thomas Lundgren

Bonin in 1996 became the first person executed by lethal injection in California. His sometime accomplice, Vernon Butts, who was involved in Lundgren’s murder, was found dead in his cell in 1981, a towel wrapped around his neck.

— On May 30, a team of neurosurgeons at the University of Utah Medical Center separated 19-month-old twins, Lisa Hansen and Elisa Hansen, who were joined at top of their heads. They both lived to be 42, and died within two months of each other in 2020.

— On May 24, the last 48 of the more than 900 Americans killed in the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana the previous fall, were buried in a common grave in Oakland, California. Most of them were children and all of them were unidentified.

— On May 24, once and future New York Yankees manager Billy Martin apologized for punching out a reporter from the Reno Gazette the previous fall. I was a huge Martin fan as a kid, but the guy was a sociopath.

On May 25, Alien premiered in limited release but still managed to be crowned the box office champ. I avoided that movie like the plague when it came out because I heard how terrifying it was and I had no interest in being scared out of my skin. I didn’t see it until I was an adult and it was fanfuckingtastic. (Side note: I liked Prometheus a lot. Fight me.)

Other multiplex draws included the George Hamilton vampire comedy Love at First Bite; the prescient The China Syndrome; and the terrific-but-I-only-need-to-see-it-once The Deer Hunter. The Champ made a star of little Ricky Schroder; Jaws was in re-release.

Mad Max, a ragtag, imported Australian action flick, polarized critics. Some were impressed by George Miller’s direction while other were put off by the film’s ultraviolence. The flick would ultimately become a hit, particularly when measured against its budget, and, like Alien, spawned a franchise that still exists today.

Remember a few weeks ago when I separated the art from the artist and said that Annie Hall was Woody Allen’s masterpiece? Well, I find it impossible now to watch Manhattan, which was unseated by Alien as the No. 1 movie in America. Allen’s character’s relationship with a 17-year-old girl hits way too close to the bone.

Coppola, center. On his shoulders is daughter Sofia.

The 1979 Cannes film festival wrapped May 24. The Palme d’Or was shared by two films: the unsettling The Tin Drum, directed by Volker Schlondorff, and a movie that would become lauded as one of the greatest in American cinema history — Francis Ford Coppola’s bombastic and mind-blowing Apocalypse Now. The crazy thing — among many crazy things about the movie — is that Apocalypse Now wasn’t even finished yet.

Norman Fell and Audra Lindley, as the Ropers

The TV season was pretty much a wrap, with top shows including Laverne & Shirley; Happy Days; Mork & Mindy; Three’s Company; spinoff The Ropers; All in the Family, MASH, Charlie’s Angels, Angie, and 60 Minutes.

Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff was the most popular song in America. Peaches & Herb’s Reunited; In the Navy by the Village People; and Sister Sledges’s We Are Family — just before it was declared the official song of the Pittsburgh Pirates — were also burning up the charts. But it wasn’t all disco — the smooth and slurry Chuck E.’s in Love, by Rickie Lee Jones, was also a hit, and new wave was cementing its hold: Heart of Glass by Blondie had landed big.

Elton John was on tour in the Soviet Union, one of the first Western rock stars to be allowed to do so. Supertramp’s Breakfast in America was the best-selling album, with Minute by Minute by the Doobie Brothers, Spirits Having Flown by the Bee Gees, and Summer’s Bad Girls in the mix.