Speaking of Dell's Space Man ...

[dan bailey]

... as Lone Ranger was a couple of days ago in the "What Classic Comics Have You Purchased Lately?" thread, a few months back when the title came up I mentioned that one issue's cover happened to show up a few years later as the cover of a paperback I own of Norman Spinrad's The Men in the Jungle. That's hardly a particularly earth-shattering observation, I know, but even so I decided a few minutes ago to track down photographic proof, to wit --

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/arktrav/1508_2_008.jpg

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/arktrav/607776233.jpg

Which makes me wonder how the heck a Dell comics cover that appeared on newsstands in probably the fall of '63 (the GCD listing, which otherwise is a placeholder, cover-dates it as March-May '64) wound up on a Leisure Books novel in the mid-'70s. (The edition pictured is at least a 2nd printing, which looks to have come out in '75, which very much lines up with my memories of buying it new. Could've been '77 instead, though ... depends on where you look.)

The companies, not the artists, tended to own the artwork, no? Would Dell have had a different arrangement? (And/or was there some connection between Dell & Leisure?)

(Unless it's a deliberate close copy of the comics cover, which would explain the attacking spaceships that are swooping in on the novel but not the comic. Or maybe they were on the original painting, but omitted for the comic for whatever reason [they would've been pretty much blocked out by the title logo, anyway], then restored for the novel. Or added for the novel ... )

I'm also wondering if any other comics covers ever did "double duty" on paperback ...

[Red Oak Kid]

That's a great find! Thanks for posting the two covers.

I can't offer any explanation for it. I think the most likely explanation would be some kind of connection between Dell and Leisure.

[T GUy]

I'm pretty positive that Dell had a paperback book branch as well as a comics branch.

[dan bailey]

They certainly did -- I'm sure I own numerous Dell PBs from the era. Leisure Books, afaik, was an entirely different imprint.

[Lone Ranger]

Great find, Dan!

I don't know about these Space Man covers. The other one I posted is odd, because the creatures only bear a passing resembance to the creatures inside. Perhaps it was used elsewhere as well.

If you look at the cover to various Myron Fass magazines, you'll not a real change in the 'look' in 1971. They go from being those day-glo grotesque covers to rather interesting and stylish covers with a sci-fi theme. Or course, they revert to the earlier look after a few issues.

It makes me wonder if Fass sourced (stole?) these covers from elsewhere. Here are a couple of examples.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v471/scottandkat/CBR/WitchesTales.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v471/scottandkat/CBR/terrortales.jpg

[dan bailey]

Neat! I'm pretty sure I was completely unaware of that more sedate approach to covers on the Fass mags. When I was seeing, & very occasionally buying, them off the newsstands they were very much in their classic garish-&-chaotic mode.

I need to look for a gallery of those so I can compare them to possible matches from the hundreds (probably more like thousands) of sf PBs I've got from the '60s & thereabouts, not to mention my memories of the thousands more I used to own but never was able to retrieve from Arizona after moving back home to Arkansas & getting divorced in the mid-'80s. (Good thing, really, that I'd helped finance the move out west in the first place by selling off 99.9 percent of my comics collection in the summer of '81, because otherwise the same fate would've befallen it.)

Another possible source for some of those covers would've been old sf digests or even pulps. That first Witches' Tales cover really looks like a possible candidate. European covers from prozines or PB editions would be another possibility ... I know that the cash-strapped sf prozines, Amazing & Fantastic, that (former big-name comics fan) Ted White edited were making use of European covers as late as 1970 for budgetary reasons.

[Lone Ranger]

Here are a few more examples what I'll call 'outliers' of Fass covers.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v471/scottandkat/CBR/TT.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v471/scottandkat/CBR/weird.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v471/scottandkat/CBR/voodoo.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v471/scottandkat/CBR/tomb.jpg

They are sooooo different than the other covers from these series. They just don't fit in with the rest of the various cover galleries.

I'm not even including the covers from the actual sci-fi magazines published at the same time, like Strange Galaxy.

[dan bailey]

Some of those really remind me in style & approach of the European covers I mentioned Ziff-Davis' Amazing & Fantastic publishing about 40 years ago ...

[Red Oak Kid]

Some of those really remind me in style & approach of the European covers I mentioned Ziff-Davis' Amazing & Fantastic publishing about 40 years ago ...

I agree that several of those sedate Fass covers look like they were done for SF digests or SF paperback books.

It's not at all unusual for stuff like this to be outright stolen. I wouldn't be surprised if the Space Man cover was used without permission by Leisure books. They may have come across a film negative of the original painting sans logo and been unaware that it had been published before.

And we really don't know where Dell got the image for their comic. It doesn't exactly look like a typical Dell comic book cover painting either.

[Scott Shaw!]

The figures on that SPACEMAN cover are identical to the ones on the paperback cover, but if you'll compare the flames, they're different in their pattern. Since Dell's comic book division petered out in the early 70s, perhaps the cover image was sold, perhaps it was used without permission, or perhaps it was used without Dell's permission, but Dell had already shut down their funnybook division.

Those Myron Fass covers look to me like they are reprints of European science fiction magazines and/or books.

Aloha,

Scott!