Every week, I will be sharing with you three comic book "easter eggs." An easter egg is a joke/visual gag/in-joke that a comic book creator (typically the artist) has hidden in the pages of the comic for readers to find (just like an easter egg). They range from the not-so-obscure to the really obscure. So come check 'em all out and enjoy! Also, click here for an archive of all the easter eggs featured so far! If you want to suggest an easter egg for a future column, e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com (do not post your suggestion in the comments section!).

This week, we feature a trio of John Byrne comic strip easter eggs!

In Uncanny X-Men #142, Rick and Joanie from Doonesbury are in Washington D.C. when the X-Men show up to foil an assassination attempt on a Senator by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants...



Thanks to Jukka Laine for the suggestion of this one!

Awhile back, I featured Byrne's famous scene from Fantastic Four where Reed and Sue move to the suburbs and all of their neighbors are famous comic strip characters.

In that same edition, I featured the following page from Spectacular Spider-Man where Byrne had Mike and Zonker from Doonesbury guest-star.



However, I forgot to point out that the fellow with the yellow hat was Crazy Harry Klinghorn from Tom Batiuk's comic strip, Funky Winkerbean.

After seeing his character drawn by Byrne, Batiuk and Byrne became friendly, with Byrne actually drawing Funky Winkerbean awhile back for a couple of months while Batiuk was dealing with health issues. Byrne has made appearances in the strip, as well...



In the tenth issue of Next Men, Byrne also had Batiuk's comic strip character Ed Crankshaft (From the comic strip Crankshaft, which is written by Batiuk and drawn by Chuck Ayers) appear...





Thanks to Pete Scribner for the suggestion of this one!

That's it for this week! If you have any suggestions for future comic book easter eggs, drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com