A term that originated from The Golden Age of Comic Books. There was a big rush to copyright as many characters and titles as possible, but the actual production time of a comic book made it a bit problematic when days or even hours mattered. The solution? Create a simple mock comic, often just a cover and some unrelated filler made up of garbage sheets, and submit it to the copyright office. The term itself comes from the fact that these comics weren't ever actually made to be distributed, often just going straight to the ashcan (period vernacular for trashcan) once they did their job.