A few Easter eggs.

§ November 30th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on A few Easter eggs.

I should be doing a New Comics Day rundown, but I got behind and, well, what can you do? So instead, here’s something we were chatting about at the shop…comic book “Easter eggs.”

One of the more famous ones is the message Barry Windsor-Smith snuck into issue #8 of Conan the Barbarian (August 1971). Here’s the panel in question:

And here it is, nice ‘n’ big:

Given the number of panels in this issue filled with piles of coins, you could hardly blame the guy.

Now the Overstreet price guide always lists Ka-zar #1 (Aug. 1970) as a “hidden profanity cover,” and, if you sorta squint at Zabu’s back, by the tree, you see this:

Actually, blowing it up to that size obscures the naughtiness…it looks more like the word in question at its normal size.

The cover for the 1988 Spectre annual by Art Adams is filled with hidden cross-company characters, such as the Thing (along with other Fantastic Four members):

…and the Marvel version of Hercules:

…the Creature from the Black Lagoon (cleverly drawn to look as if he were wearing a collared shirt):

…Spock:

…Wolverine (along with several other X-people):

…and none other than the famous Sam & Max, Freelance Police:

And pal Kevin pointed this out to us at the shop, from the cover of U.S. 1 #4 (Aug. 1983) by Michael Golden…a little chicken man among the other chickens, by the UPC code box:

I think it’s just a generic chicken guy in glasses, while Kevin is convinced it’s Super-Chicken in his civilian identity of Henry Cabot Henhaus III:

(Image from Dave’s Un-Official Super-Chicken Page…auto-playing sound at link.)

There are plenty more comic book Easter eggs, hidden messages and the like, out there in the wild, but these are just a few that came to mind right away. Well, there are also the hidden messages in many issues of the Marvel/Epic run of Groo the Wanderer (which usually read “this is the hidden message” — one of these even made it to the Groo poster release at the time).

Any other funnybook “hidden messages” that you can think of? Leave ’em in the comments, if you’d like.

EDIT: I can’t believe I forgot this, from Saga of the Swamp Thing #19 (Dec. ’83)…in this panel of Un-Men drawn by Steve Bissette and John Totleben:

…you can see Gumby, Spider-Man, and what appears to be E.T.:

…and the green guy above E.T. looks familiar, too, but I can’t quite place him.

Lots of good Easter eggs in the comments section…some I remembered, some I didn’t. Please feel free to keep adding to the list!

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