CSBG Archive
Comic Book Easter Eggs – Murphy Anderson Hidden Signatures!
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 three examples of Murphy Anderson hiding his signature in a comic he penciled and inked.
These are all pretty obvious where they are on the page, so I won’t tell you where they are, except to note that the latter two are the more common “MA” signature while the first one is a unique Anderson signature.
First up, perhaps the coolest one of all Anderson signatures, Anderson’s cover for Flash #165…
Next, from Strange Adventures #145…
Amusingly enough, Anderson then just flat out signed it at the end of the story…
Finally, Strange Adventures #153…
Anderson has many more examples of this hidden signature in his work over the years (back when artists weren’t credited on their works). I’ll do a second edition of Murphy Anderson hidden signatures if you folks e-mail me at least six more examples!
4 Comments
cool arrow
November 2, 2012 at 12:08 pm
OK, I see the first one. Looking for the other ones is giving me a headache.
CriticalFel
November 2, 2012 at 12:17 pm
2nd one is the birds in the sky, last one is on the floor close to the lower left corner of the page. I kept missing the second one.
Mike Blake
November 2, 2012 at 8:03 pm
Three for three. The first one is amusing; I was getting eyestrain trying to read the actual text in the prayer-book when the answer was right there in front of me…
I had no idea Anderson did this kind of thing.
Travis Pelkie
November 2, 2012 at 10:56 pm
I keep finding “Nina”, is that right?
No, this is cool. Especially that Flash cover.