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Comic book artists sometimes hide little secrets
in the isssues they are drawing.
Sometimes it could be funny cameos, hidden games,
or even insults to their bosses or fellow comic creators.
Sometimes, it can even reference
really cool YouTube channels.
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Welcome to Comic Misconceptions.
I'm Scott, and the comic that references our channel
is a real comic book called Suicide 5
and is just one of the seven secret things
we will be talking about today
that artists have hidden inside of comics.
Obviously, there are endless examples of these things,
but I simply wanted to share with you some of my favorites,
and how could I not start with that one?
Though, honestly, I don't think we'll ever have a video
that has as many views as the one in the comic did,
which is a bit discouraging.
(dinging)
So, continuing with our list, let's talk about sex.
This is one of the more well-known ones,
but I think it bears repeating because of how funny it is.
New X-Men number 118 from 2001 sneaks in
over a dozen instances of the word 'sex'
hidden in the background art of the story.
Many people have speculated on the significance behind this.
There are lots of theories about
what it means in terms of the story.
Was Emma Frost using her mind powers
to break the fourth wall
and influence the creative team behind the comic?
Was a character who appeared in the story,
named John Sublime, supposed to be a reference
for these hidden subliminal messages?
Was it intended to hint at Cyclops
having cheated on Jean Grey with Emma Frost?
The answer is none of these.
None of them. None. Nope.
While at first the artist of the issue, Ethan Van Sciver,
claimed that is was never intentional
and people were just seeing things,
he later revealed that the instances
of the word 'sex' were obviously deliberate,
but it had nothing to do with the story.
He was simply upset with Marvel at the time for some reason
and decided to have a little fun.
Quote, "It had nothing to do with anything at all."
It's also been speculated that it was an effort
by the entire creative team, including the inkers,
colorists, and possibly even the writer, Grant Morrison,
for making the story include sexual undertones.
This would not be the only instance where an artist
would rebel a little and poke fun at the higher-ups.
Enter Al Milgrom, a prolific penciler, inker, writer,
and editer for tons of Marvel comics
before leaving to become a freelancer.
You may recognize Milgrom's name from Ant-Man,
where Scott Lang and his crew were staying
at the Milgrom hotel, a nod to the legend,
even though ne never actually worked on
any Ant-Man comics as far as I could find.
Milgrom apparently really despised
Marvel's former Editor-in-Chief,
and DC's current Editor-in-Chief,
at least at the time of this video, Bob Harras.
And really, that's pretty understandable when you realize
that Harras oversaw the Clone Saga.
Now, the Clone Saga was a mess for many reasons;
I'm sure we'll tackle it in a video someday,
but let's get back on track.
So, for some reason that escapes the history books,
Milgrom hated Harras.
So when Harras left Marvel and was replaced by Joe Quesada,
Milgrom was ecstatic about this,
and his excitement showed in his work.
Literally.
Milgrom was hired as a freelance artist
to work on a Marvel comic called Universe X Spidey,
which sounds like the most 90s title
you can give a Spider-Man comic
even though it came out in the early 2000s.
Hidden in a bookshelf in the background
of one of the panels from the story,
Al Milgrom left a secret message
regarding Harras having left Marvel.
And if it's a bit hard to read,
allow me to help out with the power of editing.
It says, quote, "Bob Harras. Ha, Ha. He's gone.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
He was a nasty S.O.B." End quote.
Not the subtlest of people, that Milgrom fellow.
Unfortunately, the secret was found
and edited out for the main run of the comic,
but the unedited version with the insult
was sent out to retailers before it officially hit shelves,
meaning there are a few thousand copies
of the recalled comics still floating around out there.
And if you have one of these, let me know.
I kinda want one.
Let's move on to a lighter topic.
Like trolling.
Artist Leinil Yu is known for such works
as Superman: Birthright, Supercrooks,
one of my personal favorite Mark Millar books,
but mostly lots and lots of Marvel books,
including lots of Avengers and X-Men titles.
And Yu, this Yu, not you you.
Well this is gonna get confusing.
Anyway, Yu loves to tease Marvel
about one of their creations, Howard the Duck.
When he gets an opportunity,
he sneaks Howard into the comics that he's working on.
Usually it's whenever there's a big crowd of characters,
like in New Avengers.
You can see him right there.
In the comic book event Secret Invasion,
Yu drew up some promotional art
that also doubled as the cover for the lead-up issue,
a big crowd of characters, and one of them: Howard the Duck.
Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada even had to come out
and clarify that Howard wasn't actually
going to be in Secret Invasion.
Yu was just messing with him.
Additionally, the writer of the Secret Invasion event,
Brian Michael Bendis, reportedly explained
that he specificly told Leinil Yu not to sneak in
a Howard cameo into the actual story,
but, of course, Yu couldn't resist.
This Yu.
Well, you couldn't probably resist either.
I couldn't.
In Secret Invasion number six,
we once again have a large crowd of hereos
and can you spot the hidden Howard?
I'll give you a moment.
He is right there.
He also makes an appearance in issue number seven,
but that one is significantly easier to find.
Turns out the reason why Yu keeps throwing
Howard the Duck into his comics is because he wants Marvel
to stop pretending like he doesn't exist.
He reportedly said, quote,
"I'm making Marvel pay for creating him
and, if he's not dead, they need to use him."
This really isn't a problem these days.
Howard has seen a surge in popularity
since his appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy,
and he's even featured back in the comic book universe
even though we all know that
the real Howard was stolen from Marvel
and the one that remains is a soulless clone.
And for a bit more trolling, we turn to the art of swipes.
Swiping in comics just means that one artist
is intentionally copying covers, panels, character stances,
or even entire pages of another artist, or artists', work.
There are whole websites dedicated to finding these swipes.
Many artists have been guilty of this,
so I don't mean to call attention to one guy
as if he's the only person who's ever done it,
but this one certainly does have a pretty funny ending.
When comic book artist Roger Cruz
was starting out in the industry, he often swiped art
from popular artists like Jim Lee, which to be fair,
he was not the only one to do so.
There are countless instances of artists swiping
from Jim Lee, but Cruz also swiped from
a then up-and-coming artist named Joe Madureira.
Not a particularly smart move on Cruz's part.
You see, Madureira had only been penciling comics
for maybe a year at this point,
therefore, he didn't have that wide
of a library to swipe from.
So when Cruz started swiping art, like this one,
and this one, and even this one, twice,
it was pretty obvious that he was getting
those images from Madureira.
To retaliate, Mad included a little easter egg
in Uncanny X-Men number 325 since he figured
that Cruz would be reading every comic he drew.
On the surface, it doesn't look like anything
out of the ordinary, but if you look a little closer
at the newspaper headline, you'll see the phrase,
"Cruz swipes again."
Brilliant.
And apparently there's no bad blood
between the two these days.
No. It's good.
This next one is one of my personal favorites.
Todd McFarlane is famous for a few things,
including his work on Spider-Man comics.
On almost every cover of a Spidey comic
McFarlane worked on, starting with
Amazing Spider-Man number 303, he would draw hidden spiders,
like this, and this, and this.
He would even hide multiple spiders on a single image
and would write a number next to his signature
to clue everyone in to how many to look out for.
If there was no number, there would only be one spider,
but some covers would have two, three, four, or even more.
On the cover of Spider-Man number 1,
a comic that McFarlane both penciled and wrote,
he had drawn so many little spiders
that he sincerely lost count
and just threw up a question mark by his signature.
I was too lazy to count how many there actually are,
so if you have that kind of patience,
let me know in the comments.
Jim Balent did a similar thing with Catwoman.
He hid cats on every cover of the series,
but they weren't always as subtle as McFarlane's spiders.
Some were very obvious, like these cats on a car,
or on this trash can.
They'd eventually get more tricky,
like a cat on a handle of a knife, or in Catwoman's hair,
but the best one, the best one, has to be the time
that Balent drew a catfish on the cover.
Amazing!
Speaking of Mark Millar, which would have been
a great segue a few minutes ago when I actually
was talking about Mark Millar,
he wrote a comic called Chrononauts that has
a really interesting secret on the cover of the first issue.
So secret, in fact, that according to the artist,
Sean Gordon Murphy, somewhere around 93 to 99% of people
will never be able to see it.
Now, I want to try something.
I don't want to influence you
by telling you what to look for,
however, I will tell you where to look for it.
Right here, inside of this clock face.
We should all be able to see the cracks and the tickmarks
and the yellow dot in the middle,
but according to Millar and Murphy, a very small percentage
of you should be able to see a hidden image
overlaid on top of the entire clock face.
A symbol of some kind.
Most people believe this to be a hoax
and, honestly, their scientific explanation of how it works
is based in science that merely sounds
like it could be true, but is total nonsense
stating that artistic people who are right-brain dominant
are more likely to see it, even though the whole
left-brain/right-brain argument is
a completely false understanding
how the brain actually works in the description.
This also came out not too long after
the dress phenomenon, so it's possible that the comic
was simply trying to ride that wave of one group of people
seeing one thing and another group seeing something else.
Regardless, I want to know if this is really true.
If you see it, write it in the comments,
but if you don't see it, but know
what's supposed to be there, don't spoil it for anyone.
I'll reveal what the hidden image is on Monday's video.
So make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it.
And what did I miss?
What other easter eggs have artists sneaked into comics?
I know there are likely hundreds of things,
so we'll probably do a Part Two sometime in the future,
with your suggestions.
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And if you want to learn more about comic book art,
we recently did a whole series of videos
exploring why comic book superheroes
are designed the way they are.
It explores the real world origins behind tights, capes,
wearing underwear on the outside, and more.
You can click right here to go watch
the first episode in the series.
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Once again, I'm Scott,
and I'll see you right here on Friday for another video.
See ya.