Kirby After Ditko?

Until recently, I don't recall ever owning a copy of TALES OF SUSPENSE #6. It's possible I had one at some point, but I can remember almost every comic book story I ever read when I was a kid, and all of the yarns in this one seemed to be new to my eyes.

One thing that's cool about this issue is that the cover art, which is classic Kirby, seems to be based on the monster in the first tale which is by Steve Ditko. That was a neat development. Did Kirby do the cover and Ditko have to create a story to go with it? Or had Ditko already done the story and Kirby created a cover to go along with the feature? I'm betting the latter, because the monster just doesn't look like your typical Kirby creation. It does, however, look like something Ditko would have summoned from his mind.

Great Kirby cover. The monster almost looks as if he was added after the main art had been done, or was a second thought creation wiping out the original figure.

 

And the Ditko splash page from the feature story. This monster looks like the kind of thing Ditko was routinely creating for a number of companies for which he was working during this period.