Historical text from CxPulp:


zuckyd1
03-25-2015, 12:33 PM

I thought it might be fun to maintain a list of veiled, obscure or surprising references in handbook entries. I only have time to make a brief informal list right now but I will modify this post further when I get a chance, and I of course welcome suggestions. This right now is off the top of my head, so I probably made a few errors.

Melmacians mentioned in entries for High Evolutionary and Evolutionary War
Devil's Reign Top Cow crossover alluded to in Mephisto's entry
various mentions of crossovers with characters from "a distant cosmos"
crossover between X-Men and an "enterprising" starship crew
Nick Fury may be related to Rex Fury, the original (non-Marvel) Ghost Rider.
Hugo Danner (Marvel's adaptation of Philip Wylie's novel Gladiator) mentioned in Marvel Atlas
at least two references to Hostess ads (Spider-Man and Hulk stories)
a reference to a TSR Alpha Flight RPG module
a number of pre-FF anthology stories pulled into continuity
version of Merlin from other publishers (Mage, Prince Valiant, etc.)
Captain Britain Corps members showing up in Alan Moore's Top Ten
Elf With a Gun's appearance in a DC comic
Riverdale mentioned in Punisher entry
more to come...


Angelicknight
03-25-2015, 12:41 PM

off the top of my head
Star Trek alluded to in Kang's entry
Justice League alluded to in a few Gamesmaster and Mantis entries i believe there is a few others as well
Mantis at DC (Willow) and Eclipse (Lorelei) in the Mantis entry



Andy E. Nystrom
03-25-2015, 04:25 PM

A number of Who Watches the Watchers participants sneaked into the third Iron Manual in some form or another. Check this thread starting from historical, April 21, 2010 http://www.cxpulp.com/showthread.php?7124-Iron-Manual-Mark-3


Stuart V
03-29-2015, 02:56 AM

zuckyd1 wrote:

I thought it might be fun to maintain a list of veiled, obscure or surprising references in handbook entries. I only have time to make a brief informal list right now but I will modify this post further when I get a chance, and I of course welcome suggestions. This right now is off the top of my head, so I probably made a few errors.

Melmacians mentioned in entries for High Evolutionary and Evolutionary War
Devil's Reign Top Cow crossover alluded to in Mephisto's entry
various mentions of crossovers with characters from "a distant cosmos"
crossover between X-Men and an "enterprising" starship crew

Also mentioned in 616 Proteus' entry.

zuckyd1 wrote:

Nick Fury may be related to Rex Fury, the original (non-Marvel) Ghost Rider.
Hugo Danner (Marvel's adaptation of Philip Wylie's novel Gladiator) mentioned in Marvel Atlas

Also Sherlock Holmes, per Marvel's adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles and hints in Master of Kung-Fu.

zuckyd1 wrote:

at least two references to Hostess ads (Spider-Man and Hulk stories)
a reference to a TSR Alpha Flight RPG module
a number of pre-FF anthology stories pulled into continuity
version of Merlin from other publishers (Mage, Prince Valiant, etc.)

Camelot 3000 and DC's Demon's Merlin too. Allegedly.

zuckyd1 wrote:

Captain Britain Corps members showing up in Alan Moore's Top Ten
Elf With a Gun's appearance in a DC comic
Riverdale mentioned in Punisher entry
more to come...

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

A number of Who Watches the Watchers participants sneaked into the third Iron Manual in some form or another. Check this thread starting from historical, April 21, 2010 http://www.cxpulp.com/showthread.php?7124-Iron-Manual-Mark-3

Oh, if we're going for characters whose secret identities are homages then this could become quite a long thread.


Angelicknight
03-29-2015, 09:36 PM

The Heap mentioned in the Glob entry.
Tarzan mentioned in the Abdul Alhazred entry.


vanhornluke
03-30-2015, 01:46 PM

The 60s handbook referencing the Infant Terrible's appearance in the French series Special-Zembla​.


Andy E. Nystrom
03-30-2015, 09:04 PM

Riverdale also mentioned in Millie the Model's entry in Hardcover #7 (I recommend that if a list of these is going to be maintained, both the entry and the specific Handbook(s) should be listed so people can find the Easter egg quickly).


zuckyd1
03-31-2015, 11:47 AM

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

I recommend that if a list of these is going to be maintained, both the entry and the specific Handbook(s) should be listed so people can find the Easter egg quickly.

Can't it just be assumed that the latest version of an entry will have the easter egg? Or have there been ones that have been removed during subsequent revisions?


Stuart V
03-31-2015, 12:32 PM

zuckyd1 wrote:

Can't it just be assumed that the latest version of an entry will have the easter egg? Or have there been ones that have been removed during subsequent revisions?

They should still be there in the latest editions.

You might also want to add the Impossible Man to that list: Encountering an interdimensional imp he called “Mixed Pickles” in a dimensional interface, he entered into a competition with him. 
and later in the entry
Mixed Pickles also impersonated Impy on at least one occasion to torment the FF of an undisclosed dimension. 
http://www.comicscube.com/2013/06/easter-eggs-mxyzptlk-and-impossible-man.html


Andy E. Nystrom
03-31-2015, 06:32 PM

zuckyd1 wrote:

Riverdale mentioned in Punisher entry

I just checked the Punisher's entry in the Hardcovers and I'm not finding this, though Riverdale did get a mention in Millie's entry. It wouldn't surprise me if Riverdale was mentioned elsewhere as well.

Angelicknight wrote:

Justice League alluded to in a few Gamesmaster and Mantis entries i believe there is a few others as well

Minor nitpick: It's Grandmaster and not Gamesmaster whose entry mentions a league of heroes. Easy mistake to make considering Grandmaster is a gamesmaster.

Stuart V wrote:

They should still be there in the latest editions.

More likely than not, though as you know all too well some of the entries got rewritten pretty thoroughly. But certainly I'm willing to assume this is the case unless evidence presents itself to the contrary.

David: are you interested in me listing the Amalgam and other more Easter egg type characters who appear in the Marvel Encyclopedia appendices? I'm referring to the actual Marvel-published encyclopedias (which are considered as official as the Handbooks) and not the DK ones.

Doctor Demonicus' entry in the Hardcovers mentions Godzilla a fair bit, which itself might not be an Easter egg. But what is more of an Easter egg is that Godzilla is actually depicted from his appearance in West Coast Avengers after Marvel lost the rights. Unlike the other monsters, Godzilla is not captioned.


zuckyd1
03-31-2015, 08:42 PM

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

I just checked the Punisher's entry in the Hardcovers and I'm not finding this, though Riverdale did get a mention in Millie's entry. It wouldn't surprise me if Riverdale was mentioned elsewhere as well.

You're right, I was thinking of Millie's entry. Red Fever also gets an entry in the Marvel Knights encyclopedia.

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

David: are you interested in me listing the Amalgam and other more Easter egg type characters who appear in the Marvel Encyclopedia appendices? I'm referring to the actual Marvel-published encyclopedias (which are considered as official as the Handbooks) and not the DK ones.

Sure. And if anyone knows of any Index easter eggs those would be great as well.


Stuart V
04-01-2015, 12:36 AM

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

Doctor Demonicus' entry in the Hardcovers mentions Godzilla a fair bit, which itself might not be an Easter egg. But what is more of an Easter egg is that Godzilla is actually depicted from his appearance in West Coast Avengers after Marvel lost the rights. Unlike the other monsters, Godzilla is not captioned.

That's a generic dinosaur-like monster!


Sean Lee Levin
04-01-2015, 09:16 AM

The Captain from Texas story in Marvel Westerns: Outlaw Files is credited to Holly Martins, the pulp western writer played by Joseph Cotten in the classic film The Third Man.


zuckyd1
04-01-2015, 12:17 PM

Sean Lee Levin wrote:

The Captain from Texas story in Marvel Westerns: Outlaw Files is credited to Holly Martins, the pulp western writer played by Joseph Cotten in the classic film The Third Man.

That's a great one!


Stuart V
04-01-2015, 02:19 PM

Western Files has a fair few Easter Eggs (as does Monster Files, also written "in universe"). For example, the Gunhawks entry:

It's an e-mail from Hollywood screenwriter Ben Charles (introduced in Get Kraven) to producer Ted Silverberg, trying to sell the idea of a Gunhawks movie. As we've seen with Johnny Storm filming the Rawhide Kid movie, it appears that Westerns are still big in the Marvel universe, presumably replacing superhero movies. Hence Ben cites examples of other recent hit Westerns - (Tobey) Maguire as Kid Colt (instead of Spider-Man), (Ben) Affleck as Two-Gun Kid (instead of Daredevil) and (Christian) Bale as (Jonah) Hex (instead of Batman - remember this came out before there was any suggestion of a real world Jonah Hex movie). 

Ben sees the proposed movie as a potential series for (Wesley) Snipes (instead of Blade). Hamilton Slade (Phantom Rider) is lined up to be a consultant on the movie, which Ben insists will be historically accurate - something he immediately disproves by suggesting Hawaiian actor Mark Dacascos should play Red Wolf, a Cheyenne Native American, itself a nod to MD playing a Iriquois character in The Brotherhood of the Wolf, and much like Filipino/Scots-Irish actor Lou Diamond Phillips has repeatedly portrayed Native American characters (though, to be fair to LDP, his heritage does include a bit of Cherokee).


zuckyd1
04-01-2015, 06:31 PM

Stuart V wrote:

Mixed Pickles also impersonated Impy on at least one occasion to torment the FF of an undisclosed dimension. 
http://www.comicscube.com/2013/06/easter-eggs-mxyzptlk-and-impossible-man.html

As with the mention of Neopolis in the Corps entry, it's especially cool when a Handbook easter egg is itself referencing an easter egg! 


vanhornluke
04-02-2015, 11:59 AM

Stuart V wrote:

Bale as (Jonah) Hex (instead of Batman - remember this came out before there was any suggestion of a real world Jonah Hex movie).

Interesting. I hadn't caught this before. Should this be taken as evidence that there is a 616 Jonah Hex, or merely that there are Jonah Hex stories in 616? We do know that there are fictional Superman stories in 616, so why not Jonah, too?

Another easter egg in the Outlaw Files is the section written by Rex Lane, where he specifically references three of Rex Fury's Ghost Rider stories from Magazine Enterprises.


vanhornluke
04-02-2015, 12:07 PM

zuckyd1 wrote:

And if anyone knows of any Index easter eggs those would be great as well.

Well, it was just pointed out in another thread that the Index entry for Avengers #200 references an issue of Marvel Classics Comics as the previous appearance of D'Artagnan.

The Cap Index references some generic 50s war comics illustrating real historical events as next appearances for historical characters like Winston Churchill and Douglas MacArthur, strongly suggesting that the rest of the 50s stories based on historical events for people like George Washington and Wild Bill Hickok are also 616.

Both the Spidey and Avengers Indices reference the Spidey/Red Sonja crossover published with Dynamite, which I found surprising, since before I noticed this I thought that series was a non-canonical expanded retelling of the original Spidey/Red Sonja crossover in Marvel Team-Up.


zuckyd1
04-02-2015, 02:29 PM

vanhornluke wrote:

The Cap Index references some generic 50s war comics illustrating real historical events as next appearances for historical characters like Winston Churchill and Douglas MacArthur, strongly suggesting that the rest of the 50s stories based on historical events for people like George Washington and Wild Bill Hickok are also 616.

I think for the time being I'll limit the list to those historical stories which are specifically cited.

EDIT: Whoops, got my web sites mixed up. This is an easter egg list, not a reading order, so OF COURSE it will only be limited to stories that are actually cited. 


Stuart V
04-02-2015, 02:45 PM

"vanhornluke" wrote:

Interesting. I hadn't caught this before. Should this be taken as evidence that there is a 616 Jonah Hex, or merely that there are Jonah Hex stories in 616? We do know that there are fictional Superman stories in 616, so why not Jonah, too?

Stories. And, just to be clear, in case anyone starts feeling litigatory, the book did not say Christian Bale starred in Jonah Hex - just that an actor with the name Bale starred in a hit Western called Hex. This might well be a suggestion that in the Marvel universe little known British actress Chloe Bale hit it big in Hollywood in a Western/fantasy mash-up movie where she fought a bunch of witches in the Old West. 


zuckyd1
04-02-2015, 03:58 PM

Stuart V wrote:

Stories. And, just to be clear, in case anyone starts feeling litigatory, the book did not say Christian Bale starred in Jonah Hex - just that an actor with the name Bale starred in a hit Western called Hex. This might well be a suggestion that in the Marvel universe little known British actress Chloe Bale hit it big in Hollywood in a Western/fantasy mash-up movie where she fought a bunch of witches in the Old West.

Yeah, Christian Bale is one actor you don't want to piss off.


vanhornluke
04-13-2015, 03:51 PM

In the abbreviation key for the Avengers Index, there's a listing for the Amalgam story Thorion of the New Asgods. I haven't been able to find where in the Index this story is referenced, however, so I'm not sure if this counts as an easter egg or not.


zuckyd1
04-13-2015, 06:17 PM

I don't think explicit mentions of the Amalgam titles themselves qualify as easter eggs since their canonicity, along with DC vs. Marvel, seems pretty firmly established and Reality-9602 gets mentioned by name quite a bit in handbook profiles. However, any veiled or cleverly-worded descriptions will still qualify. To pick a very simple example, I will be listing the Fin Fang Foom profile because it states that the merger of 616 with another reality caused him to be "amalgamated" into Fin Fang Flame.


vanhornluke
04-13-2015, 07:24 PM

Agree, which is why I said I'm not sure if the Thorion reference should count as an easter egg or not since I couldn't find the reference and read it for myself. Anyone know where in the Avengers Index that story is mentioned?


Cerebro
07-28-2015, 05:21 AM

Adding one to the list...

Several Transformers characters (Rodimus Prime, Galvatron, Cyclonus, Scourge, Unicron) and The Doctor from Doctor Who are mentioned in the Death's Head entry from the first A-Z series. Death's Head encountered all of these characters during his early Marvel U.K. appearances.


mal32
09-11-2015, 06:51 PM

I have a silly/nice/funny game/question to ask and I thought to ask it here:

looking at every Official Handbook of The Marvel Universe that Marvel made from the beginning, who is the Marvel Character who appeared in more covers?
I repeat that it is a silly/nice/funny game/question, only to play a little together...


skippcomet
09-12-2015, 05:12 AM

mal32 wrote:

I have a silly/nice/funny game/question to ask and I thought to ask it here:

looking at every Official Handbook of The Marvel Universe that Marvel made from the beginning, who is the Marvel Character who appeared in more covers?
I repeat that it is a silly/nice/funny game/question, only to play a little together...

The Invisible Woman. You can't prove she WASN'T on all of them. 


mal32
09-12-2015, 06:00 AM

skippcomet wrote:

The Invisible Woman. You can't prove she WASN'T on all of them.

I like your intelligent and funny reply but this is not the right answer, sorry [also the Ant-Man and the Wasp could be everywhere ;-) ]


Stuart V
09-12-2015, 08:41 AM

mal32 wrote:

I have a silly/nice/funny game/question to ask and I thought to ask it here:

looking at every Official Handbook of The Marvel Universe that Marvel made from the beginning, who is the Marvel Character who appeared in more covers?
I repeat that it is a silly/nice/funny game/question, only to play a little together...

Well, Wolverine and Spider-Man have probably have more entries than anyone else. But the most covers? Mr. Fantastic would be my bet. He was on 9 covers of the Deluxe Edition, giving him a significant early lead over everyone else.


mal32
09-12-2015, 09:55 AM

Stuart V wrote:

Well, Wolverine and Spider-Man have probably have more entries than anyone else. But the most covers? Mr. Fantastic would be my bet. He was on 9 covers of the Deluxe Edition, giving him a significant early lead over everyone else.

Bravo!!! Mister Fantastic body elongated from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #7 (his right leg) to #15 (with his right hand stopping the Wrecker's Crowbar). The funny thing is that skipcomet replied with his wife!!! :-)

I have a question to Stuart V: do you know why Mister Fantastic was not on the cover of the 2009 Hard Cover #7? Every time have it in my hands I "suffer" for his loss...https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/966197.jpg


Stuart V
09-12-2015, 12:32 PM

mal32 wrote:

Bravo!!! Mister Fantastic body elongated from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #7 (his right leg) to #15 (with his right hand stopping the Wrecker's Crowbar). The funny thing is that skipcomet replied with his wife!!! :-)

I have a question to Stuart V: do you know why Mister Fantastic was not on the cover of the 2009 Hard Cover #7? Every time have it in my hands I "suffer" for his loss...https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/966197.jpg

As I've said before, he is on there. That's not webbing zombie Spider-Man is swinging from...it's Reed's entrails.  

Joking aside, there's no reason that I know of. We supplied a list of potential cover "stars" for each issue for the artist to use, along with some art references for same. Not everyone listed got used - it was the artist's choice. Either we somehow overlooked Reed or the artist simply didn't choose him from among the numerou choices listed.


mal32
09-12-2015, 02:18 PM

Stuart V wrote:

As I've said before, he is on there. That's not webbing zombie Spider-Man is swinging from...it's Reed's entrails.  

Joking aside, there's no reason that I know of. We supplied a list of potential cover "stars" for each issue for the artist to use, along with some art references for same. Not everyone listed got used - it was the artist's choice. Either we somehow overlooked Reed or the artist simply didn't choose him from among the numerou choices listed.

I see, thank you for your reply.
The facts are two: 1) Reed Richards is a very important character and normally the important characters are always on the cover and 2) normally a guy who can elongate his body is cool to be drawn on a cover: so I was very surprised for his missing (and I started to love the Marvel Universe thanks to the Fantastic Four so all of them are very important for me)


Historical Text from Capes (Optional)
MISSING?

Last edited by zuckyd1 (1/05/2020 2:41 pm)

Merlyn's entry mentions he has been impersonated by the "time-traveling Doctor", referencing the revelation in the Doctor Who TV story "Battlefield" that a future version of the Doctor takes up the identity of Merlin.

Matador's entry identifies him as once being known as "el Supremo" while at the height of his bull-fighting career in Spain, until the Hulk derailed things. This references what I believe is the very first non-US Marvel story which appeared in the British weekly Smash! #38.

Loki wrote:

Matador's entry identifies him as once being known as "el Supremo" while at the height of his bull-fighting career in Spain, until the Hulk derailed things. This references what I believe is the very first non-US Marvel story which appeared in the British weekly Smash! #38.

Didn't Brazil beat that story by publishing original Black Rider stories in the 50s?

Loki wrote:

Leader's profile:
"tried to steal a power generator designed to harness gamma radiation, but was thwarted by Spider-Man and the Hulk"
Not sure if you'd count it as an Easter egg, since it is still just referencing a Marvel story, but given where the story saw print... This is a reference to the Hulk and Spider-Man battling the Leader in The Gamma Gambit, which was published on toilet paper.

That definitely counts!

It's been many years so the memory is vague at best, but iirc Chief Inspector Jack Lamb might be a nod to Patricia Wentworth's detective Chief Inspector Ernest Lamb.

Mario Zampa and General Francis Mayhew were two of the people Doctor Claw lured to his island in Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain#239. Their first names were revealed in the Atlas, but surnames and profession came from that story. 

I couldn't swear to it, as I didn't write the entry, but I suspect that Karl Hanson is the protagonist of Strange Worlds#1 story "I Captured the Abominable Snowman." The Tales to Astonish story where Carl Hanson becomes an Abominable Snowman is basically the same premise, but the two stories have enough differences to make it impossible for one to simply be a retelling of the other. Thus the shared surname is a nod to the fact that one is a copycat of the other.

I'll pass the queries on to the handbook team, to see if the original writers recall any answers to what you are asking.

A few new ones (well, old ones, but not previously listed here):

Razorback's handbook profile mentions "Later, shortly after entertaining patients at Texarkana’s Wassner’s Children’s Hospital, he chanced upon an assassination attempt on the US president by the World Federalists, throwing himself in the bullet’s path and capturing the assassin. Thanks to this high profile escapade, he enjoyed a brief period as a media darling, getting a news special, “Razorback: The Man, the Hero, the Mystery,” having networks vying for the rights to make “Buford and Taryn: The New Adventures of Razorback,” and using his newfound fame to promote charitable causes such as a widow’s fund for truckers killed while on the job. After being made an honorary member of the Secret Service, he publicly came out as a mutant to encourage human-mutant tolerance."
All of that originates from the novel Generation X: Crossroads.

Darklore's entry mentions that "Initially a scholarly and peaceful youth, Darklore acquired power from a demon to save his father, only to years later destroy his entire homeworld to save it from the same demon." Jim Starlin, creator of Darklore, had clearly intended him to be an older version of Darklon, whose stories Starlin had produced for Warren Magazine's Eerie, and that origin mentioned in Darklore's entry is a very abbreviated summary of same. 

Pete Wisdom's entry mentions him working with the X-Men against the N'Garai prior to him encountering Excalibur. This took place in a prose story "Up the Hill Backwards" in the anthology Five Decades of the X-Men.

Not really an Easter Egg, since it was published in a Marvel UK title and always intended to be set in 616, but the Atlas' UK entry mentions Merlyn empowering Kilgore Slaughter - this comes from a never reprinted UK story Time Smasher, published in Rampage Monthly.

Though I'm aware that many sites and individuals have long since spotted these, the civilian identities of many of the interdimensional Corps were nods and homages to other characters:
Agent Albion - Victoria Whitman - suggesting that in her reality Victoria Bentley married Dane Whitman and took his surname.
Anglo-Simian -  Joseph Cornelius, named for cinematic apes Mighty Joe Young and Cornelius from Planet of the Apes
Buccaneer Britain - Bartholomew Teach, the piratical captain being a portmanteau of pirates Black Bart (Bartholomew Roberts) and Blackbeards (Edward Teach)
Captain Airstrip-One - George Smith - named for 1984 author George Orwell and that novel's protagonist Winston Smith. 
Captain Colonies - Stephen Rogers - fairly obvious, I'd think
Captain Empire - Robert Doherty - his name comes from his appearance in his own, non-Marvel stories, published in the small press titles Paper Empire and Captain Empire.
Friar Albion - Petros Wisdom, a variant of Pete Wisdom
Gotowar Konanegg - Kavin Plundarr, a variant of Kevin Plunder, aka Ka-Zar
Justicer Bull - her surname was already given, but since the Justicers are expys for 2000AD's Judges of Mega-City One, her first name comes from Judge Cassandra Anderson.
Kommandant Englander - Helga Geering, after the German characters Helga Geerhart and Hans Geering from 'Allo 'Allo, a British sitcom set in occupied WWII Belgium.
Lady London - Sybil Sherman, named for characters from the sitcom Fawlty Towers, Sybil Fawlty and Polly Sherman 
Privateer Albion - Jack Turner. Another piratical Corpsman, named for Jack Sparrow and Will Turner of Pirates of the Caribbean fame.
Will of the People - John Raven, making him a variant of the man better known as Killraven.
Captain Prydain - Lloyd Thomas, named for Lloyd Alexander (author of the Chronicles of Prydain) and Gareth Thomas -  there's a number of famous Welshmen of that name, but in this case it was the actor and star of British SF series Blake's 7 that was the inspiration.
Flight Leader - Dan Hampson. Since Flight Leader's visual and codename is clearly inspired by British comic character Dan Dare, his real name is a portmanteau of Dan Dare and his creator Frank Hampson.

One I just remembered, which I'm surprised that no one online seems to have ever spotted.

There's an Easter egg/hidden joke in the names of the Overlord and his parents; spotting it might hinge on understanding the real world backstory behind the species the Overlord hails from. 

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

Loki wrote:

One I just remembered, which I'm surprised that no one online seems to have ever spotted.

There's an Easter egg/hidden joke in the names of the Overlord and his parents; spotting it might hinge on understanding the real world backstory behind the species the Overlord hails from. 

His father Ralgand is probably a nod to Lar Gand (Overlord is from Dakkam, Lar Gand/Mon-El/M'onel/Valor is from Daxam). I think the other two names refer to Kryptonians; mother Zarakel; reference to Kara Zor-El/Supergirl. His own name Rakkhal likely a mix of Kal(-El) and Clark (Kent) thus Superman. Interestingly, years later the Supergirl series did in fact depict Supergirl and Mon-El as a couple for a time, which wasn't the case during that handbook period.

Pretty close. Ralgand is indeed from Lar Gand. The first Daxxamite we met was Wundarr, who was a Superman pastiche. So the theme was continued with Overlord and his family, Dad Ralgand is a nod to Lar Gand, a.k.a. Mon-El of the LSH. Mom Zarakel was a halfway between Kara Zor-El, Supergirl, and Lara-El, Superman's mother - simply using an anagram of either name seemed tricky, as the former is too long and the latter offers too few decent options. As for Rakkhal, he's Halk Kar, who was at the time a somewhat obscure DC Superman character - he's less so now, as he apparently recently reappeared in the comics. 

A few new ones (well, old ones really, but new here)

Alternate Earths Appendix mentions that Earth-9, Saturnyne's never-seen homeworld, is a "cyber-governed parallel." Since it was Alan Moore who first informed us that Saturnyne came from Earth-9, that's a nod to another Alan Moore series, Top Ten, which we know has other ties to Moore's Captain Britain run thanks to Corps members, the Fury and Special Executive members making cameos in the series.

Captain Universe's entry notes "Though accounts vary, perhaps due to reality distortion, a University of Tennessee veterinary student became Captain Universe to aid the X-Men against the mutant Roger Fieldston," The accounts vary bit comes from the fact this this is referencing a special comic where readers could send off for a customized version which would feature them as the hero of the tale - thus no two copies of this title have the same individual becoming Captain Universe. So who is the student vet mentioned? That'd be then head handbook writer Jeff Christiansen, as he was one of the many fans who got a personalized version of the issue. Thus he was once Captain Universe in some timeline, and RHIP.

Minor Human Torch foe the Sorcerer was identified as being Jonathan East. Though there's no resemblance between the two, he's named after a friend of mine. 

Proteus (616)'s entry mentions "Proteus actually traveled into space. Eventually passing through a psionic rift into another reality, he sensed a kindred spirit, a human explorer who had gained vast psionic powers when the starship he was helmsman on had ventured where no man had gone before and encountered the rift; driven mad by the godlike power, he had eventually been slain by his best friend, the ship’s captain, with the assistance of another rift-empowered crew member."
This references the X-Men/Star Trek crossover comic, and the bit about the human explorer who gained vast psionic powers is basically the plot of Star Trek's second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

Found one more on the Master List, and this I'm 100% sure is an Easter Egg:
Sunstroke (Sol Brodstroke)
Obviously named after Sol Brodsky
 

While I can't recall that one specifically, I'm pretty certain you're right on that. There are a few older characters who ended up sharing names of their creators.

Loki wrote:

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

Found one more on the Master List, and this I'm 100% sure is an Easter Egg:
Sunstroke (Sol Brodstroke)
Obviously named after Sol Brodsky
 

While I can't recall that one specifically, I'm pretty certain you're right on that. There are a few older characters who ended up sharing names of their creators.

Two more that I'm aware of:
In the Controller's entry, the Mercenary's real name is said to be Archibald Tuskwin. The character was created by writer Archie Goodwin and artist George Tuska.
In the Tzin entry, the character of Dorreen is given the last name "Caragonne". She was created by writer George Caragonne, who died not longer after her story was published.

A possible easter egg—or lack thereof:
In X-Factor #71 Valerie Cooper mentions that she has a brother who's an FBI agent who sounds suspiciously similar to Twin Peaks' Dale Cooper. The only sibling listed in Valerie Cooper's handbook entry is a brother named Grant. I can find no further information about Grant Cooper online. Is Grant intended to be the aforementioned FBI agent, and if so what is the significance of his first name? And if not, does Valerie indeed have a second brother who should have been mentioned in the profile?