Posted By Dan Greenfield on Oct 8, 2025 | 3 comments

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 39 years ago…

This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of Oct. 8, 1986.

Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of Oct. 1, 1951. 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 Oct. 5 and Oct. 11.)

So, let’s set the scene: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met with President Ronald Reagan for a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, aimed at reducing nuclear arms. The talks began Oct. 11 and they came close to a deal on eliminating all medium-range missiles based in Europe. The negotiations collapsed the next day, however, when Gorbachev insisted the U.S. shut down plans for the so-called “Star Wars” defense system — officially the Strategic Defense Initiative.

The dissolution of the talks was a source of frustration at the time, but ultimately SDI was doomed to failure and the Soviet Union was already on an inexorable path to implosion following April’s Chernobyl disaster. (By the way, the summit will be the subject of a forthcoming motion picture, Reykjavik, starring Jeff Daniels as Reagan and Jared Harris as Gorbachev.)

On Oct. 10, El Salvador’s capital city of San Salvador was rocked by a violent earthquake that was felt in neighboring Honduras and Guatemala. Up to 1,500 people were killed, with 10,000 more injured and 200,000 left homeless.

Crocodile Dundee was the top movie at the box office and provided the U.S. with kind of an oddball cultural moment. Paul Hogan was so charming as the titular lead that Americans became enamored of all things Australian. (Case in point: The flick’s popularity actually drove the 1988 creation of the Tampa-based Outback Steakhouse, owned by four people who’d never been Down Under.) The action comedy, which opened in late September, had a nine-week run at No. 1.

Other top picks at the multiplex included the era-defining Top Gun, which made a megastar of Tom Cruise, Stand by Me and The Fly. The Color of Money, which underscored Cruise’s cinematic appeal, opened in New York on Oct. 8. Starring Paul Newman, it was director Martin Scorsese’s sequel to the famed actor’s 1961 film The Hustler.

At the same time, there were memorable films at the art houses, including Jim Jarmusch’s hilarious Down by Law, David Byrne’s True Stories — and David Lynch’s career-topping Blue Velvet. The shock thriller added maybe 15 different phrases to the Greenfield vernacular. To this day, I’m convinced that the whole hipster fixation on Pabst Blue Ribbon began right here:

My friends and I started drinking it right away. Anyway, Hopper was nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar for Hoosiers, which came out later in the year, but we all knew it was really for Blue Velvet. It’s just that the Academy had no courage.

The big news in TV was the Oct. 9 soft launch of the Fox network, which was created to compete with the Big Three of CBS, NBC and ABC. The first show was The Late Show, a late-night talk show hosted by Joan Rivers. The show started off strong in the ratings but quickly faded. No matter: The network itself would begin prime-time programming in April 1987 and change the face of television.

NBC’s The Cosby Show was a juggernaut. New shows on the Big Three that fall included ALF, Crime Story, Designing Women, Head of the Class, L.A. Law and My Sister Sam.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical The Phantom of the Opera premiered in London on Oct. 9.

I was out of the Top 40 business by this time. The Billboard 100 was led by When I Think of You, by Janet Jackson, followed by Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone), by a group I’ve never heard of called Glass Tiger, at No. 2.

The Top Gun soundtrack was the best-selling album. Fore! by Huey Lewis and the News was at No. 2, with Lionel Richie’s Dancing on the Ceiling at No. 3. At No. 4, was Bon Jovi’s career-topping Slippery When Wet, which featured such safe rockers as You Give Love a Bad Name, Livin’ on a Prayer, and Wanted Dead or Alive.

Oo-wuh, oo-wuh, oo-wuh, oo-wuh…

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Dan Greenfield, editor, 13th Dimension

Superman #1, DC. With reboots and new No. 1s commonplace now, it’s hard to remember just what a big deal it was that DC was publishing Superman #1. I was completely sucked in by John Byrne’s The Man of Steel, and so I was completely primed for this run. For a while there, Byrne’s Super-stories were my favorite comics and that period still goes down as my favorite era for comics’ Man of Tomorrow. That said, I’ve never been a fan of this cover. It’s perfectly fine and all, but it’s not what I think of when I think of the first issue of a series, especially one as historic as this one. (Adventures of Superman #424, on the other hand…)

Scott adds: The first post-Crisis Superman issue from John Byrne after the debut of The Man of Steel miniseries, and off to a strong start it was with a decidedly Terminator-influenced re-introduction of Metallo.

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Elektra: Assassin #4, Marvel. Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz at their best.

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Batman #403, DC. Not my favorite period on the title. It was kinda tough to get a handle on where things stood after Crisis and the stories were really just OK at best. (The good stuff was over in Detective.) But speaking of Miller, all that would change with the next issue.

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Howard the Duck: The Movie #2, Marvel. Oh, yeah. This was out this year, too.

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Blue Beetle #8, DC. I’d be curious to read DC’s pre-JLI Blue Beetle stories.

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Elvira’s House of Mystery #11, DC. A Dave Stevens classic. Perfect for Halloween season.

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American Flagg! #37, First. Requisite reminder that there was a whole lot more going on than the Big Two. A classic series.

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Jon Sable, Freelance #44, First. What I just said.

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Scout #12, Eclipse. What I just said, again.

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

The Avengers #275, Marvel. Here we are, midway through “Under Siege” from Roger Stern and John Buscema, one of the best and most memorable Avengers tales of the 1980s.

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Secret Origins #10, DC. This was a genius idea from Paul Levitz. Since no one can ever really know anything about the Phantom Stranger, this issue offered four entirely different origins for the character, and from a murderer’s row of creators, including Alan Moore, Levitz, Jim Aparo, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Joe Orlando, Ernie Colon and more.

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Airboy #7, Eclipse. Beautiful cover here by the great Paul Gulacy.

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MORE

— RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale The Week of October 1 — in 1951! Click here.

— RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale The Week of September 24 — in 1973! Click here.