That's pretty awesome, I love ragman in the back.

Very cool I became a fan of Ordway's Work on Superman during what I call the Steel Age (1987-2003 roughly) and I met him a number of times at a Comic Shop I used to frequent in Norwalk, CT
(I would have put Rex the Wonder Dog a little further down under the Riddler so it looked like Rex and Robin were working together.

I'd like to see what was chosen over this.

Here's the actual cover to Who's Who #19, covering the end of P-R, that was used, by Ernie Colon...







There are any number of reasons it was rejected. The cover had to show everyone inside, there could have been a last minute content change if a character moved from one issue to the next, it could have missed a character included, it might not have been what the editor was looking for, it might not have featured a certain character who was to play a big role in an upcoming story prominently enough, there are innumerable reasons it could have been rejected.

-M

I'd guess if Ordway was the intended cover artist, and it was rejected, whoever got the assignment was going to have to do a rush job to meet a deadline, so Colon, who has a rep as fast was probably given it and asked to turn it around quickly, so it may not be the best example of his work, he usually has very good compositions in his covers/panels, but then all the Who's Who covers ar ea little off kilter for a couple of reasons, they had o leave a large empty space on the right side for the text box and had to leave the center empty because it was a wrap-around cover and no characters could be on the fold, they needed to be on one side or the other, plus there had to be room for logo and other trade dress, so a lot of characters had to be crammed into the space allowed and areas that would balance the composition were off-limit because of the way the cover was assembled for sale presentation. 

-M

Yeah, have to do a last-minute cover with all those characters would certainly account for a lot of it.

The things that jumped out to me were that the group of Raven, the Question and that guy with the pipe looks like one cohesive piece, as does Robotman fighting whoever. Everybody else just kinda feels tacked on, and the three yellow characters clumped together creates an odd focus. Not to mention the giant limb.