My next easter egg page is from New X-Men #118, which was at the center of a mini controversy when it came out. It turns out later some people noticed either penciller (Ethan Van Sciver) or the inkers (several for this issue) had inserted to the hidden word SEX in almost every page of this issue (click the SEX link for the best article on this issue). While apparently everyone denied any involvment in this controversy (or just plain easter egg hunt), the appearances are just to many and too vivid to be a coincidence. HOWEVER, as I'm always being timley, at this weekends Wondercon in San Francisco (from comic book resources.com) ,Van Sciver also touched upon his time with Marvel, specifically "New X-Men," which he remembered as a less than pleasant time. "Me and my editors were starting to get into a kerfuffle," the artist said after he was assigned more fill-in issues on Grant Morrison's "New X-Men" than originally planned. "By issue 118, I'm already annoyed by Marvel. I had only been there for one issue. I have a very short fuse, and decided to pay them back a little bit by secretly hiding the word 'sex' on every single page of 'New X-Men' in different colorful ways."
The art team behind Van Sciver was in on the scheme, and what he had done, and it eventually snuck by editorial with nobody the wiser.
After reading about this story, I just had to see if I could find one of these pages, and once again, I had one turn up at inker Prentiss Rollins' section at The Artist's Choice . On this particular page, you can see the partial word SEX in the second panel of the gun smoke (staring James Arness as Marshall Matt Dillion). According to the web article sited above, it is also visible in the gun smoke of the third panel, but frankly, I don't see it (although I also never see the sailboat in those stupid Magic Eye pictures either.)
