Four Color #609

Dell's "Movie Classic" adaptation of Walt Disney's The Littlest Outlaw brings to life "The Heroic Tale of a Small Boy and a Horse" in this 1954 ten-cent gem. The cover — painted by John Ushler and colored by the Western Publishing Production Shop — fills the frame with a young boy in a straw hat and striped serape standing close beside a bridled horse, their faces turned toward each other against a deep green sky, with a sun-baked Mexican village visible in the distance. It's a quietly affecting image that captures the bond at the heart of the story before you've even turned a page.