Radical Rick Easter Eggs
On your marks, get set, hunt!!
Every made-up universe has its Easter Eggs… and fans everywhere are better for it.
Without those tiny, hidden scribblings, pictures, inside-jokes and little clues that deepen and connect fictional worlds, why else would we watch Marvel and Disney movies in slow motion for hours on end?
Seriously.
And what would those brave souls, toiling in Mom and Dad’s basement with a flickering screen, a half-finished Mountain Dew, and veiny-red eyeballs do with their time? …aside from getting some exercise with a little dodgeball?
But we digress.
In revving our engines for the Radical Rick Book in the works, we can’t resist going back to the vault and sharing some sweet, zany Easter Eggs laid by Damian himself over two rad decades.
Read on to sample some of Radical Rick’s humor, timestamps, and Mad-Magazine style eye candy packed in the background.
Egg Basket 1: Back to School in Episode 8
Here’s a warm-up.
Right from the start, (this bad boy’s from the Sept, 1980 issue of BMX Plus!), Damian peppers the scene with special guests from the illustration and entertainment world.
Keep scanning to see what Radical Rick’s cameo classmates are each daydreaming about.
We’ll list our findings at the bottom of this newsletter!
Egg Basket 2: On the Air (Episode 26)
Plenty to see in this teaser panel packed with timestamp decorations.
Moving up and left to King Wolfman Mac’s man-cave broadcasting studio, (complete with the vinyl on the walls), what objects, mashups, and pop culture references can you find?
Egg Basket 3: Mr. T’s Army Tank (Episodes 45 - 48)
We can’t get enough of Mr. T’s battle tank… and we pity da fool who’s not riding with all kinds of Easter Eggs.
In other panels, and not to be outdone with curled ram’s horns like something out of Mad Max Fury Road, we find the tank saddled with a locomotive cowcatcher, a megaphone, a surfboard in a siderack… and even baddie Thrasher Bones crammed into the gun.
All this before the fearsome Attackilac, with its toilet-plunger turret gun.
Egg Basket 4: Playing on brand names in a filthy junkyard alley
There’s a lot going on here… more than Spike and Mug getting tossed down an alley like sacks of potatoes.
From ‘Clorocks’ soap to what appears to be a crate of cabbages, the junk is full of gems… and satirical takes on more than a few consumer products.
And what’s up with the graffiti on the top right panel?
Are the Greek letters some secret message to Rad fans with magnifying glasses?
It’s possible.
If you think you’ve found everything in these Easter Baskets, don’t forget to check our answer key at the bottom of this newsletter.
Word on the Track
A few things:
Damian’s 100 Day Drawing Challenge on Tik Tok is coming up on the big finish! Keep checking on Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok for an announcement on some rad, one-day drawings going on sale.
Check our Tik Tok and Instagram for a few teasers.
We’d also like to thank everyone who bought some tickets for last month’s Radillac raffle! Thanks to your rad generosity and Foursquare Disaster relief, we raised over $1000 of benefit relief for Ukrainian refugees.
Stay tuned for our next newsletter where we’ll name drop the winner!
Thank you, rad fans.
Rad Fact #3: Radical Rick is full of secret messages for those who have decoders.
Drumroll….
And here it is!!!!
One hundred percent official membership is right.
With this top secret de-coder, Radical Rick fans were able to read messages scrawled in the background, on the walls of buildings… and even in white spaces between panels of the comic itself.
Now that you’ve got it, time to try it out!
For one last challenge, break the code in these three panels below.
When you’re done scroll on down for the ULTIMATE Radical Rick Easter Egg Answer Key.
EASTER EGG ANSWER KEY:
Egg Basket One:
With our little eye, we spy… a blonde with a bob haircut daydreaming of Radical Rick; Snoopy daydreaming about Woodstock, laying on a platter; a penguin daydreaming of an ice cold fridge; the Radster thinking everyone and everything here is square, and on the far edge, Frankenstein under the dunce cap, daydreaming of, well…. nothing.
Egg Basket Two:
In Wolfman Mac’s broadcast studio, we see… an ‘Ozzy Osbourne Christmas Album,’ a blue Woodstock poster, a vinyl record with rubber darts on it and ‘Disco love’ in the middle, Garfield, golden bottom teeth, and what might be an enormous quarter laid on the table (we can tell from the ridged side).
Egg Basket Three (panel one):
On the tank we see assorted bandages, an ‘I Heart BMX’ sticker, an old-fashioned typewriter, a golf hole with a flag, a megaphone… we’re wondering what’s in the parcel of supplies right behind Mr. T.
And in panel two with the tank in the distance, we see a surfboard, a life raft and paddle, a T.V. set, a cannon, a small bird, and a ram’s skull and horns. Have we missed anything?
Egg Basket Four
First off, Butch Cartilage’s beady eyes are skulls (what else?) With Spike and Mug in the pile of junk, there’s ‘Clorocks’ soap, a box of Sugar Frosted Cardboard, a redline sticker, a cat with a fishbone thinking ‘Rad!’ cabbages and an orange… and Killroy with the giant nose, (a sneaky pre-internet meme that goes back to World War II.
Decoding Panel One:
From left to right, diagonally on the wall, Damian drops a hint that Purin Flashin’s boasting of his evil scheme is all in vain. The coded message reads: ‘That’s what you think.’
Decoding Panel Two:
Beneath the panel, Damian hints at how an entire BMX race was sabotaged by one Butch Cartilage. The answer makes sense… it’s ‘Butch cut the tires.’
Until next time…
Stay rad and keep your eyes open.
If we missed something, or if you’ve got your own Radical Rick Easter Eggs, hit us up on Instagram!
Have a wonderful Easter
