When GQ releases three versions of its December "Men of the Year" issue, it's widely acknowledged that it's a marketing plithe (that, based on our own coverage of this one single issue, has worked). When The New Yorker spits out four different versions of the same issue, it gets the "high art" label. Why? Some convoluted, intelligentsia means of storytelling.

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. [...]

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.

Fine, it's not a "marketing" gimmick, per se. But it's clearly an attempt to get people to visit newyorker.com for something other than their narrow columns of text. What's that called? Bribery?