The first three covers of the year were drawn by Affra Gibbs and the last one was drawn by Holly Kaufman Spruch.

The mini-covers in the upper-right would also continue throughout the year.  The covers, as always, focused on things that were happening in the hacker world - and there was no shortage of them.

The Spring 1993 cover focused on Austin, Texas, where the Secret Service was on trial for violating the rights of Steve Jackson Games in the raid that helped launch the Electronic Frontier Foundation three years earlier.

A hacker in a 2600 t-shirt is seen by the side of a highway holding a sign that reads ".edu" in much the same way a hitchhiker would hold up a sign with their desired destination.

This hacker wants to go to school on the information highway.

This particular character would become known as the face of 2600 in future covers and even eventually on the 2600 van.

There are numerous signs spread out along the highway, including ones that people in Austin would recognize: Magnolia, Texadelphia, and Europa were all popular cafes to hang out in.  At the end of the highway was an image of the Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz with the word "Oasis" on a banner being pulled by a plane.

Austin was often referred to as an oasis in the Texas desert.

There were also references to the incoming Democratic regime, the first of its kind since 2600 began publishing.

"Bill's" and "Hillary's" signs along the highway denoted fictitious cafes in the names of the President and First Lady.

The inclusion of "Nick's" next to them was a reference to a short-lived television program called Nick & Hillary that had aired several years earlier.

A bus driving past on the highway has the license plate of "52IF."  This undoubtedly was a reference to the license plate found on The Beatles' Abbey Road, which read "28IF" and had been seen as a hint of the rumored death of Paul McCartney, who would have been 28 had he lived.  (The math doesn't work on either plate as Paul's age at the time of each of these references would have actually been 27 and 51.)

As for the dead elephant on the side of the road, that was clearly a reference to Republicans on the way out of power.

The donkey on a sign by the Emerald City is the flip side of the transition.

This issue's mini-cover was a simple message: TEXAS FEDEX NOFIVE!

For one thing, it incorporated the traditional exclamation point that always appears on the cover of the first issue of the year.  The message was basically sharing a discovery some of us had made when visiting Austin for the Steve Jackson Games vs. Secret Service trial: Simplex locks on FedEx boxes in Texas didn't have a five in the combination, unlike others throughout the country.