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Inside jokes in superhero comics that probably flew straight over your head, faster than a speeding bullet.

We wanna say the comic book industry is home to the some of the most inside baseball finagling this side of the MLB, but the term “inside baseball” might be a little too inside baseball. The phrase refers specifically to a detail-oriented approach to the minutiae of a subject, which in turn requires such a specific knowledge about what is being discussed that the nuances are not understood or appreciated by outsiders (thanks Wikipedia), which is pretty much how all superhero comics operate. You need to have an extensive knowledge of their history to get the most out of them or, in some cases, to even follow what’s going on. To read a modern superhero comic is to be a curator of seventy years of a funnybook museum whose smallest, seemingly insignificant item you could be called upon to recall at any given moment.

Who’s that obscure supervillain? What thirty-year-old storyline are they talking about here? What’s a Life Model Decoy? These are all questions to which true fanboy know the answer without even thinking. With such long, convoluted continuities to draw upon, the superhero comics of the Big Two – DC and Marvel, that is – are densely packed with references, in-jokes and nods to past stories. The majority of us have been trained, from years of reading these things, to not only spot these fleeting references, but also to understand them. And we do a good job, for the most part.

Still, there are some inside jokes that will pass under our collective radars. These are put there by writers, artists, and even editors as little asides to amuse themselves, or even to make a point; not detail-oriented minutiae on the subject of superheroes, but references to the behind-the-scenes goings on in the comic industry. Creative teams have sneaked in parodies of their peers’ work, protests at editorial decisions and even secret messages for other comics professionals.

These are the most inside of inside baseball, the inside jokes in superhero comics that probably flew straight over your head, faster than a speeding bullet.

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This article was first posted on June 26, 2014

Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He\'s heard all of the Doctor Who jokes, but not any about Randall and Hopkirk.