In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics).

Today, we look at comic book creators throwing in little nods in their comic books to their earlier famous comic book work!

This was inspired by reader Michael M. writing in about this bit from Detective Comics #471 that he wasn't sure if it was an intentional nod or not.

In the issue (by Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin), Batman investigates a doctor who looks a lot like Stephen Strange, who Englehart had a famous run on at Marvel before he left for DC Comics. The twist, of course, is that the doctor who looks like Stephen Strange is actually HUGO Strange!!

I asked Steve Englehart about it and he let me know that it was an intentional nod to his Doctor Strange work, but it wasn't his idea. It was something that Rogers threw into the comic as a fun nod to a classic work of his new collaborator. Englehart and Rogers worked together for years after this, so it's nice to know that they got off to a fine start right off the bat!

Next up is WildC.A.T.s (was Covert Action Teams part of the official title back in the day?) #8, by Jim Lee, Brandon Choi and Scott Williams. In it, Spartan and Voodoo are on a cruise as part of a mission and on the cruise, they run into Scott Summer and Jean Grey, who are on their honeymoon!

They, of course, had just gotten married in the pages of X-Men, the same series that Jim Lee had launched back in 1991.

In 1998, Peter David helped launch Young Justice at DC Comics, with artists Todd Nauck and Larry Stucker. Initially, the series starred only Robin, Superboy and Impulse. At the start of the first issue, all of the three young heroes have dreams based on other Peter David series. Robin's dream is a reference to David's work on Aquaman, Superboy's dream was based on David's work on Supergirl (which actually was still ongoing at the time - so it wouldn't technically count for this bit, but the other two titles do) and Impulse's dream was based on David's work on Incredible Hulk...

Funny stuff.

On to the next page for some Deadpool fun!!

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Two%20Deadpool%20References']

In 1997, Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness launched Deadpool's first ongoing series. It was a cult classic series, but the sales weren't always there. It was canceled twice at #25 and #33. Both times, however, the series was saved from cancellation. The first time, Joe Kelly returned to the book. The second time, he had had enough, so he let his original story for #33 stand, which ended with Deadpool "dying" (it was clear that it wasn't meant to be a real death).

Christopher Priest took over the series with #34 and it opened with a bit by artist Gus Vasquez and Jon Holdredge where Deadpool goes to limbo and meets the characters from Priest's other series, which obviously were all books that were canceled (often, Priest was given series that were nearing their end)...

Eleven issues later, Priest's run came to a close (art by Jim Calafiore and Jon Holdredge) and he had Deadpool kill, well, himself...

Very funny self-deprecating humor.

Remember how I just said that Joe Kelly did Deadpool's first ongoing series? Well, he then left Marvel for DC Comics, where he wrote Action Comics. He also did Superman/Batman Annual #1, which was a fun re-telling of how Batman and Superman first discovered each other's secret identity.

Someone hired Deathstroke to kill them, but they were saved by the Earth-2 (this was back in the days when Earth-2 was considered the world of the Crime Syndicate - evil alternate versions of the Justice League) version of Deathstroke, who is clearly meant to be Deadpool!

We establish that he IS the Earth-2 version of Deathstroke, a funny nod to Deadpool's similarity to Deathstroke...

A great gag throughout the issue is "Deadpool" keeps getting attacked or otherwise interrupted everytime he is about to tell us his name....

Very cute bit.

That's it for this edition of Drawing Crazy Patterns! If anyone else has ideas for things that get repeated a lot that you'd like to see me spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!