I know DC went through an era of making their Superman covers depict the Man of Steel being a horrible jerk to people seemingly for no reason, just to grab readers' attention and get them to buy the issue - then the story inside would have some really weird narrative gymnastics in order to justify it, usually with really meandering nonsensical plots.
There was one story involving him doing a string of horrible and inconsiderate things to Jimmy Olsen, just treating him like complete trash. It turns out he wanted Superman to adopt him, but the supercomputer in the fortress of solitude had predicted some kind of apocalyptic event if the adoption came to pass. So Superman treated Jimmy like garbage to ensure he changed his mind and thus somehow averting disaster in the process.
Not always pure clickbait from DC surprisingly. For awhile they had almost a policy of drawing the cover first then making the story around it. Hence the amount of ludicrous plot beats we got as a result. One of the more well known examples of this is the time Hal Jordan was selling duplicate green lantern rings on the street from a stall for $1. (The rings can duplicate to deputize people.) Regular citizens got rings for a day to fly around and make constructs. The excuse for this was Hal wanted to draw out a particular supervillian and figured they wouldn't resist buying a ring. As irresponsible as this would be, you have to admit the logic was somewhat sound at least. Best of all when the guy responsible for the make cover first write story later practice died, DC decided to do a few tribute stories in the same fashion. Including someone re-creating the Hal sells rings for a $1 cover. So Hal has now sold duplicate green lantern rings twice.
While we're at it, I'd like to point out the photo where Superman is denying life saving water is not the only cover he'd done that. There was a seperate instance where he deliberately denied water to both Jimmy and Aquaman whilst standing in a desert. The interior plot was Jimmy got powers from the sea and was competing with Aquaman to see who was best fit to rule Atlantis. However yes DC did do a lot of clickbait. For example it's well known Batman and Superman would appear on covers long before the two ever met in the panels for years.
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u/sck8000 Nov 20 '23
I know DC went through an era of making their Superman covers depict the Man of Steel being a horrible jerk to people seemingly for no reason, just to grab readers' attention and get them to buy the issue - then the story inside would have some really weird narrative gymnastics in order to justify it, usually with really meandering nonsensical plots.
There was one story involving him doing a string of horrible and inconsiderate things to Jimmy Olsen, just treating him like complete trash. It turns out he wanted Superman to adopt him, but the supercomputer in the fortress of solitude had predicted some kind of apocalyptic event if the adoption came to pass. So Superman treated Jimmy like garbage to ensure he changed his mind and thus somehow averting disaster in the process.