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!).

Today is a special edition where I examine the celebrities that Rags Morales used as inspiration for various characters in DC's hit 2004-05 murder mystery, Identity Crisis.

Enjoy!

Rags Morales (who drew Identity Crisis along with inker Michael Bair), used celebrities as inspirations for various characters in Identity Crisis. He revealed who was who in the trade paperback collection of Identity Crisis. Again, these are INSPIRATIONS, it is not like they were exact likenesses here. There were LOTS of characters he used inspirations for, so I'm limiting it to just 20. Here are those twenty (they are almost all of the major ones)....

First, for the Elongated Man...



Morales used famed comedian/actor/singer Danny Kaye...



For the Elongated Man's wife, Sue...



He used actress Dawn Wells, of Gilligan's Island fame...



For Firehawk...



He used heiress/actress (and famed kidnapping victim) Patty Hearst...



For Green Arrow...



He used the late lead singer for Alice in Chains, Layne Staley...



(Morales notes that he likely had a little Steve McQueen seep into his depiction of Ollie as the project progressed).

For Jean Loring...



He used actress Lesley Ann Warren...



For Ray Palmer, the Atom...



He used legendary actor Paul Newman....



For an unmasked Batman...



He used a clean shaven Tom Selleck...



For Wally West...



He used actor Brad Pitt...



(The masked ones are kind of tough).

For Barry Allen...



He used actor John Hurt...



For Zatanna...



He used actress Phoebe Cates...



For Black Canary



He used model/actress Rebecca Romijn...



and actress Michelle Pfeiffer...



For Superman...



He initially used Olympic athlete/actor Buster Crabbe, best known for his "jungle" characters (including playing Tarzan) and for playing Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon on the screen. However, Morales said he ended up going pretty far away from Crabbe in the final product.



For Nightwing...



He used actor Johnny Depp...



For Starfire...



He used model Naomi Campbell...



For Wonder Woman...



He used actress/model Julie Strain...



(He likely used younger Julie Strain, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to show her dressed as Wonder Woman! It was too perfect!).

For Hal Jordan...



He used the shape of Pierce Brosnan's head, but that's it...



For Firestorm...



He used actor/comedian (and brother to Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers) Josh Meyers...



For Chronos...



He used former New York Yankee manager Joe Torre...



For the Calculator...



He used actor James Woods...



Finally, one of the more dramatic visual changes was for Captain Boomerang...



Who he used porn star Ron Jeremy...



and former Howard Stern "joke man," Jackie Martling...



That's it for this week! If you have an easter egg suggestion for a future column, drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com