Heavy Drinking In The DC Graphic Design Department In 1999?

So I've been rereading some old books I own since the public library has been closed for a couple of months now due to the COVID-19 panic (will taxpayers get a refund on their property and other taxes used to pay for services they didn't get during this period?  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!  I can hear the idiot politicians who created this mess laughing now).  Anyway, one of these books was a collection of Golden Age Flash comics.

My advice:  Read them one day at a time, and they are charming in their goofy Golden Age comic way.  Don't read them all in a row or the plot holes, stereotypical gangster villains, lack of continuity or even basic storytelling common sense, and ridiculous endings will annoy you.

One odd thing I noticed this time through (which will be the last time through unless I am reading them to a child, at 50, the things one dreamed of reading as a 5-year-old aren't too satisfying, though it was nice to make the inner 5-year-old happy) was that the back cover has a Hawkman cover on it among the four Flash Comics covers (pictured above).

What?

I know Hawkman was in Flash Comics, and he and The Flash generally alternated covers after the first few issues, but the graphic designer couldn't find a 4th Flash cover out of the bunch?  Admittedly, the Hawkman covers (generally by Sheldon Moldoff) are cool, but save them for the Hawkman collection.  There were 4 unused covers with The Flash that could have been used instead.  I don't know if DC fixed this issue on later printings, but they should have.  It looks like they let the book go out of print anyway.  With luck, when they bring it back, the Hawkman cover will be replaced with a Flash one.

Maybe the production department was drinking heavily that day . . .

If you also need something new to read, then please check out my latest novel!  It just came out this year, 80 years after Flash Comics #1!