Alex Raymond was one of the greats! It is a joy to see how he evolved. I don’t like his earlier strips, but as the years passed, he got much better.
I didn’t care much for Dick Calkins’ work on Buck Rogers. I prefer “realistic” drawings, and Calkins’ characters often verged on caricature. I liked Rick Yager’s art much better.
The film-makers knew that they could not compete directly with Bond, so they chose parody. The books were straight action/adventure/thrillers. Helm occasionally indulges in gallows humor, but the stories are always serious. And Helm never even tries to be hip or cool. “Middle-aged curmudgeon” was part of his persona, almost from the beginning. (Hamilton was a World War Two veteran, and Helm reflects his jaundiced view of the younger generations.)
Some of Fleming’s books are wonderful, and some are horrible. Hamilton was more consistent. Fleming’s best work might be better than Hamilton’s best work, but in my opinion, Hamilton’s average was better than Fleming’s average.
I knew I should have put in a caveat about Moore’s work. Moore did not create the knock-offs. But he excels at taking a derivative work, and writing wonderful stories with it. In the case of Miracleman, he took a second-derivative–a rip-off of a rip-off–and made it great.