Above is an original painting that we didn't have room for in
The Thriller Index. The artist is Giorgio De Gaspari, one of the regular cover artists on
Cowboy Picture Library between September 1958 and May 1960. Infamously, De Gaspari was asked to produce a Kit Carson cover featuring Kit by a rock in the desert with a sandy background. Rather than paint one in, De Gaspari sent his wife to the seaside by taxi to collect buckets of sand; this involved a major round-trip as Milan, where he was based, was nowhere near the ocean.
When the artwork arrived, the editors marvelled at the artist's genius... then peeled off the real sand that he had glued to the page as the machinery involved in the printing process would not have taken kindly to bits of sand falling off the artwork.
I have my suspicions that the artwork in question was either the piece above, from issue 321, September 1959, or issue 325 (October 1959), both of which have sandy backgrounds.
