Between 1941 and 1969 Classics Illustrated published 169 famous literary works as comic books. During that time no one called them "graphic novels." Huck Finn (1946) was #19 -- the 6th American text on the list. (Tom Sawyer was #50, which provides one way to measure how much "Tom Sawyer's comrade" had supplanted Tom by the middle of the 20th century.) This adaptation was illustrated by Louis Zansky, a Russian immigrant who grew up in New York; "Zansky" did the drawings for over half a dozen Classics Illustrateds, including two by Fenimore Cooper that came out ahead of MT's novel. The cover Zansky created, complete with canoe and rifle, seems to owe a lot to Cooper. The adaptation by Evelyn Goodman similarly often changes MT's text -- as when Jim is actually tied up by Tom and Huck in the second panel below. Zansky's portrayal of Jim is inconsistent. Jim's extravagant terror at seeing Huck's "ghost" has its roots in minstrelsy. But his version of the hairball scene is remarkably restrained, and as far as I've been able to learn, Zansky's title page representation of Jim steering the raft is the first time this iconic image ever appeared; another example is his depiction of a chained and dejected Jim in that shed at the Phelpses'.