This dramatic but wacky cover for the fourth issue of Spacemen from Warren Magazines is clearly meant to evoke this clash between Flash and a Ming Soldier from Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars.
Actually that's Buster Crabbe of course as Flash facing off against another stalwart serial hero Kane Richmond.
But what happened that Basil Gogos, the artist of the Spacemen cover didn't gives us a magnificent illustration of Richmond as well as Crabbe. I learned the truth at BookSteve's Library.
This blurb from the Warren editors explains the downright weird situation.
"Actually the cover on our July issue was a collectors item--the first collaboration between Basil Gogos and...Jim Warren! Upon completion of the left hand portion of the painting, Gogos was suddenly stricken with Venusian Virus and ordered to bed by his physician with a 103 degree temperature. Originally Emperor Ming was to be fighting with Flash but suddenly the choice was either a half-blank cover or___? So borrowing a popping eye from Peter Lorre, a bolt from the Frankenstein monster, a swelled head from the Metaluna mutant, a horn from a triceratops and the robotic arms of a robot, your resourceful publisher himself rushed out and got a Draw It Yourself Kit and, with the printer panting down his neck, painted the "immortal kitchen sink creature" which so many of you hailed as a Monsterpuss!"
So it's the handiwork of Jim Warren himself we see and it never to be Kane Richmond on the other side. Hmm. It's a shame the great Gogos couldn't finish this image, but perhaps it wouldn't have been so memorable as what resulted. What a hodgepodge of sources. Here they are.
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