Well, I read an interview of Buckler where he talked about in the early years (1970-1972) that editors didn't like his work much, and he was kind of a diamond in the rough without a particular style. I'm thinking when he was doing stuff like "The Rose and the Thorn" backups in LOIS LANE, and "Robin" backups in BATMAN. And there wasn't much demand for his work, with editors saying "You need to find your voice."
Then he starts imitating Neal Adams, and all of a sudden there's demand for Buckler's work, and editors are ironically saying, "You've found your voice!"
In the 1973-1976 period, I think Buckler's most interesting and individual work was his "Deathlok" series in ASTONISHING TALES 25-36. And one final concluding story in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT 33.
Up until about 1975, Buckler wasn't so much of an Adams clone. During his FF stage in around 1974-1976, he began swiping a lot from Kirby. I think that was both out of a wish to maintain continuity with the Kirby and Buscema FF runs that preceded him, and also possibly due to the enormous pressure of getting a monthly book in on time.
From 1975-1982, that's the period where his style got increasingly identical to Adams. And shamelessly so. There are several WORLD'S FINEST issues he did in the 1979-1982 period where entire panels were just blatantly swiped from Adams Batman stories, you could match them up, line for line. His DC covers from 1977-1980 were the next best thing to having Adams do covers for DC again. Which by no coincidence was the period he was doing a lot of work for Continuity. Sienkiewicz, Buckler, Broderick, Nasser, all of them, the more they worked for Continuity, the more they looked like Adams and ceased to have any individual style.
Buckler and Giffen, though... when it comes to swiping other artists, those two guys are in a class of their own.
