Spaceman #5

This May 1954 Atlas Comics entry drops readers into a breathtaking scene painted by cover artist Mort Lawrence: space-suited figures scramble across the icy, frozen surface of a small planetoid while saucer-shaped spacecraft dart through the starfield above, and a helmeted face peers from a bubble cockpit at the left edge. The sheer scale of the composition — figures clinging to a world ringed with icicles as a ladder descends from a mysterious frozen sphere above — captures the wild, anything-goes spirit of early-'50s sci-fi adventure perfectly. With a story titled "Die, Spaceman, Die!" by writer Hank Chapman and artist George Tuska waiting inside, this issue promises exactly the kind of tense, pulpy thrills that made Atlas's science fiction line a treat in 1954.