The Story Behind The Story Behind The Cover

A recurring segment in various Golden Age comics was categorized as The Story Behind The Cover, meaning there was a gargantuan picture made up for the front cover, but instead of having it as an authentic comic spread out over several pages with panels and action scenes, the book derails it to a slipshod short prose story. Harvey Comics made serious money on this in aa majority of their publications with this feature where several of their characters like Black Cat, Speed Gibson, Captain Freedom, Spirit Of 76, and Young Defenders would be seen teaming up to battle various Axis powers. While this was one of the few times that showcased all these superheroes were part of the same fictional universe, the characters didn't regularly encounter each other within their own comic stories. It's a key selling point on the cover showing all the good guys in an anthology title working together in the same scene, even though they don't have a canonical assemblage of these characters in a Justice League of their own. This was the clickbait of its time, enticing young comic fans hungry for heroes who wanted to read about cataclysmic crossovers, but instead get dumped with a hastily written plot of happenstance where these heroes just coincidentally ran into each other simultaneously while they were out running errands. Harvey was the main company to use this formula for several of their other characters like Joe Palooka, Green Hornet, Red Blazer, and the Liberty Lads, but they weren't the only ones to profit from it. The entire concept properly started with Marvel Comics with their earliest titles, and they would employ the segment even in some modern publications. Other publishers to use The Story Behind The Cover feature included DC, EC, Avon, Fawcett, and Four Star, even though the plot of their stories wasn't trying to cheat readers out of their money for what was billed as a huge event that only boiled down to a cheap authorized fanfic.