I’ve not seen the full copy of the magazine where the Kissing sailor was the cover. A magazine cover is typically chosen from the images that make up the illustrations inside the magazine. The most iconic one ends up on the cover.
We’re talking about slightly different things here though. An image can undoubtedly get detached from it’s context and live on as a “single”. People often buy single prints even when they are part of a series in the artist output. And single images from a reportage etc may live on as the representative for that work.
My claim was in the context of editing images and from the point of view of a photographer producing work and from the view of someone assessing said work. I’d be very surprised to hear that “Kissing Sailor” was sold and presented as a single photo. My guess is that Life either used more of the photographers work or carefully put together (curated) an article from a broad range of snaps. The latter sounds pretty advanced for the time but could be possible.
So again, I’m questioning the suggestion that it’s a good idea to build each image up from “scratch”. You’ll end up with a right mess. I’m also suggesting that one of the most important features of a raw developer is to be able to apply looks across images and get predictable results.
About Adams a quick web search suggests that he did publish books. I expect they were a set of images edited and photographed to work together. I haven’t found photos of the spreads just yet.