how do I group content in magazine-style ‘issues’?

I am building a website for a magazine. It won’t carry the whole content of the mag, just a teaser article or two from each issue.

I need to have a page for each issue that features these articles, something like:

http://www.magazine.com/issue/20/

I’d make a template for ‘issue’ pages that spits out all the associated articles. But wouldn’t this mean the client would have to create a blank page for each new issue, and assign the template? That seems eminently breakable. If it could be done dynamically that would be preferable.

An alternative would be putting each page in a numbered category and using the standard archive output for that category, but I’d rather use categories for their intended purpose.

Is there a standard way of doing it?

This scenario seems like an ideal opportunity to create a custom taxonomy for the magazine’s Issues: e.g. Taxonomy = issue, and Terms = August 2011, September 2011, etc.

You could even create a hierarchical taxonomy of Volume and Issue, with terms e.g. 2011 and August, respectively.

Then, you have archive pages for each issue, and you can create custom Loops based on the taxonomy.