The Enchanted Planet!

The charming 1959 Steve Ditko cover for Space Adventures #31 above is at once colorful and attractive. It's part of a typically busy Charlton design from the period and as it turns out the art work is cobbled together from two different pages in the story it promotes titled "The Enchanted Planet". The overall impression of the cover is greater than the sum of its parts. But what are those parts?

 The first panel of the first page supplies the action shot which adorns the central image of the  cover.

And the third panel of this second page supplies the head shot for the inset panel of our hero.

Here is the scene recolored for a more muted effect, minus our hero's commentary and  much of the advertising from a 1978 reprint Space War #29. To read the complete story see this link.

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