Easter Eggs in Comics: A Magic Bar in MYSTIC #15

Welcome to another installment of Easter Eggs in Comics! Click here for the archive!

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine gave me EDGE, a compendium of one or two issues of five of CrossGen's various series. And so, today's Easter egg comes from CrossGen's MYSTIC #15, by Ron Marz, Brandon Peterson, and John Dell. MYSTIC tells the story of Giselle Villard, who has gained magical powers.

In this issue, we get a scene in a bar. The bar is full of analogues or stand-ins for magical characters from other realities. Check 'em out.

Now, I could tell you who these people all stand in for, but then I did some surfing and found out that this was not the original version. According to a blog dedicated to The Phantom Stranger, this is the original version.

There's Promethea, the Scarlet Witch, the Phantom Stranger, Dream of the Endless, Dr. Strange and Clea, Dr. Fate, the dread Dormammu, Bat-Mite, and Mxyzptlk.

Interestingly, Medieval Witchblade and the Seven Dwarves were not changed.

Why did they change this for the EDGE edition? One would think copyright issues were involved, but then why didn't they change the Seven Dwarves?

Anyone know?

UPDATE: The colorist of this book, Andrew Crossley, recently commented below on this post, explaining what happened. Here it is:

I can tell you why. I was the colorist on that book. When I got the double page spread from Brandon, John and I thought it was great and funny what he did on it. Ron in the plot had said just put a bunch of magic using people in the back ground. It was Brandon's idea to use existing characters. But we also knew we would get flak from other companies about it. I wanted as a joke to mosaic out the faces like in cops or other shows like that. But we decided to do it anyways and see what happens. Well we got a bunch of legal letters as expected. So we had to make the changes for future publishing. Whoever we did not get a letter from we just left in. That's the story.

Also, I really liked this issue, so I'll be on the lookout for more MYSTIC back issues.