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!).

Scott Keith wrote in about a couple of interesting bits in Web of Spider-Man #10. Typically, when there is a newspaper article or something like that in the background of a panel, you'll just see the headline and then a bunch of gibberish.

In Web of Spider-Man #10, however, artist Jim Mooney or letterer Rick Parker put into two bits of writing that must have been laying around the Marvel Offices.

First up, in a contract the Shocker signs where he agrees to kill Dominic Fortune...



the text of the contract is an advertisement for having actors dressed up as Marvel superheroes attend your party or function. I blew up the image, but it is not especially legible (it is legible ENOUGH, just not especially legible - you can click on it to make it bigger)...



Later, a newspaper article...



It is not visible in the color version, so I had Scott scan me his page from the Essential volume he was reading when he noticed the easter egg, and here it is...



It is piece of a recent Bullpen Bulletins. Belated congrats to Terry Kavanagh!

Funny stuff.

Next, my pal Loren sent me this really clever bit from Martian Manhunter #0, where we learn the Martian names for Mars and Earth...



As Loren notes, these names are a clever allusion to C.S. Lewis. Here's Loren:

Those names are adapted from C.S. Lewis' Space trilogy, where Malacandra was the ancient name for Mars in the book "Out of the Silent Planet," and Perelandra was the old name for Venus in the sequel "Perelandra."

Clever, John Ostrander, clever!!!

Finally, reader David B. sent in this amusing (if bizarre) joke from Fantastic Four #227, where either artists Bill Sienkiewicz and Bruce Patterson or letterer Jim Novak decided to have some fun with an old gas station. The really old gas stations used to sell Ethyl gasoline. So they decided to take that to another level with a pun based on the neighbors on I Love Lucy, Fred and Ethel Mertz...



Cute (if odd).

Okay, that is it for this week! Thanks for all the neat suggestions, folks!

If anyone wants to suggest a future easter egg, feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com