For a long time, the Flash comic was famous for covers/stories like this, very meta sort of stuff. It was a big influence on a lot of today’s comic book creators, and it definitely lodged in my brain as a kid. And warped me appropriately.

Imagine you’re looking at this on a newsstand. How could you not buy it?

Flash reads

I think what I like most is the challenge to the reader to face “the terrible secret of this book.”

(From Flash #277, June 1974. Cover by Nick Cardy.)