 Raymond 's sensual artwork — for which the artist particularly " studied popular illustrators , " including pulp artist Matt Clark , whose work Raymond 's male figures particularly evoke — outshone its borders and " attracted far more loyal readers than ... [ the ] rather contrived and unconvincing adventure stories " his work depicted . Raymond swiftly became " among the most highly @-@ regarded — and most imitated — in all of comics " for his work on the weekly strip , with Harvey declaring his work on the strip " a technical virtuosity matched on the comics pages only by Harold Foster in Prince Valiant . " Raymond evolved the layout of the strip from a four @-@ tier strip in 1934 to a two @-@ tier strip in 1936 , reducing the number of panels but doubling their size . Combining this with a removal of dialogue from speech balloons to captions at the bottom of the panel afforded Raymond the space to create detailed and atmospheric backgrounds . Against these spacious backgrounds , the placement of characters in heroic pose " lent the entire enterprise a mythic air . " 
