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 begin a four-part series looking at easter eggs in Marvels, taking it one issue at a time (since there are SO many easter eggs in Marvels).

To start off, I'm not going to be featuring stuff like "Ross based this character on Actor X" or "Character Y is based on real-life person Z" or "That headline is a reference to a real issue." The first two because we'd be here all day, as Ross uses models for everyone and the latter because that's the whole POINT of Marvels, ya know?

So we're going to concentrate on cameos and other cute little nods/homages.

Again, there are so many that we're going to take this one issue at a time.

First off, when the Human Torch is unveiled, among the reporters who came out to see the unveiling are Lois Lane and Clark Kent...



I'm sure some of the other faces are also easter eggs. So feel free to tell me in the comments who they are (as if I had to tell you to do that).

On that same page, we see young Billy Batson selling newspapers...



Later, we see an homage to Edward Hopper's classic painting, Nighthawks...



Here is the painting, in case you are one of the 4 people who have not yet seen it.



In this nice nod to Joe Simon, Ross includes a drawing by Joe Simon (co-creator of Captain America) as an artist's reproduction of Captain America in this Life article.



You might recognize the drawing as what Marvel used in their tributes to Simon in their comics when he passed away recently.

Finally, here's Popeye the Sailor!



Okay, that's it for #1. Start e-mailing me easter eggs for the next three issues at bcronin@comicbookresources.com, I am sure that you know lots of them! Plus, in particular, if anyone has a big scan of the newspaper copy in #4 from either the Daily Bugle article on Doc Ock or the one on Norman Osborn (both is even better) then I'd appreciate it. I just can't quite read my copy.

Remember, e-mail me suggestions! Don't make them in the comments section! Also feel free to e-mail me easter eggs from #1 that you thought I should have featured. Perhaps I'll do a Miscellaneous edition later.