• by Tom Siebert , November 24, 2006

As magazines struggle to prove their continued relevance in the Internet age, the Cartoon Issue of this week's New Yorker melds the two mediums in a new and unique way, elevating the magazine's cover to creative art.

For the first time in publishing history (at least according to The New Yorker's hallowed research department), a magazine will use different covers to tell one continuing story. The separate pieces come together more clearly through a final online-only comic strip.

Although TV Guide and comic-book publishers Marvel and DC often use different covers of a single issue to spur collectors and fans to purchase extra copies of an issue, the strategy has never been used as segments in a single, continuing narrative.

All five components--print and online--are the work of cartoonist Chris Ware, whose graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, has been called "the first formal masterpiece of [the] medium." Ware's work is currently on display at the "Masters of American Comics" exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan.

The quartet of covers take a "Rashomon"-like look at the Thanksgiving Day experience from four separate perspectives of intertwined events. The online comic crystallizes it all with a signature event in one character's life from Thanksgiving past.

"Rather than a marketing ploy, this is an extraordinary work that has been worth the investment of time and resources--to present a subtle and moving piece of art that will draw you in and want to read the longer [online] piece and see the other covers as well," says The New Yorker's cover editor Francoise Mouly.

Mouly says Ware was inspired after reviewing a collection of magazine covers and seeing the work of artist Mary Petty, whose series of covers over the years chronicled the evolving upstairs-downstairs relationship between a wealthy Manhattan socialite and her maid.

The combination of print with the Internet, however, allowed Ware to take his work to another level, Mouly adds.

"We're all very aware of the shift in media toward the Internet. It's forcing all of us to think about what print is good for, if you can now get the news much faster," she says. "And the object-ness of print, that you can sit by the fire and spend time with it, makes it very valuable; you can focus your attention in a way that is slower and brings out the depth of meaning."

But there is also a unique value in Internet storytelling, and Ware uses it effectively for the comic's conclusion, Mouly says.

Because of the page's size online, it cannot fit on the screen all at once. "[Ware] designed the page to be moved around in your browser and read in a non-linear fashion, with all these clusters of thoughts and events, working the way that memory works," she says. "It doesn't all come to you in a clear linear hierarchy."

The New Yorker set up a special print and distribution run that would guarantee that all geographic regions of the country would receive all four covers. Delivery packaging also worked to place all four covers successively in stacks, so that even two subscribing neighbors in an apartment building stand a good chance of getting different covers.

In this day of canned publicity events and concocted news, Mouly sees a victory. "This is a triumph because by necessity, it remains intimate. Yet it remains a true media event, a humble media event," she says. "This is a museum piece, and the fact that it would be on the cover of a mass-market magazine is a sign of hope for me in this day of Thanksgiving."

All four covers and the concluding comic strip can be found on the The New Yorker's Web site.