The image was striking: 35 women — dressed in black, in chronological order by their alleged year of assault — appeared together on the cover of New York magazine, giving faces to their accounts of being sexually assaulted by the comedian Bill Cosby.

The cover presentation, and the individual portraits that accompanied the women’s stories in this week’s issue, drew widespread attention on the Internet and lit up social media as soon as it was posted Sunday night. The magazine’s website went offline early Monday morning and stayed dark until about noon, thwarting what had been extraordinary traffic. (On Twitter, a user who goes by Vikingdom2016 claimed responsibility for the disruption and did not draw a connection to the Cosby package.)

The photographs, by Amanda Demme, were accompanied by an article by Noreen Malone that examined the women’s accusations in the context of the evolving attitude in the country toward the reporting of rape accusations. Although there were no revelations in the magazine article — all of the women had come forward previously — the magazine said its intention was to show the sheer number of women who have publicly accused Mr. Cosby of sexual assault.

“I believe that there will be power in the number — and that was always our theory — that to see all these women and their stories side by side, one would have a greater sense of the magnitude of the story,” Adam Moss, the magazine’s editor in chief, said in a telephone interview.