This might be a good time to plug one of my favourite blogs, panelocity, which is devoted to swipes.

Here's a montage of typical pics from Panelocy, all from a single issue of the FF:


These were swiped from Panelocity, with permission. Yeah, I know I got some of the pictures the wrong way round

In answer to the OP, I have no problems with swipes IF the artist can draw. If the artist has shown he/she can draw, then I trust them that the swipe is there because it's the right image. If it saves them time, great. But if the artist cannot draw, then it'snot good enough to copy someone who can. I want to know that the picture is the right one for the story.

What I really don't like is copying from photos. Use them, sure, but CHANGE THEM! If you can't change them then you're not an artist IMO.  To see what I mean, here is Crystal by Kirby. Kirby really captured what it is to have power. Crystal is a princess, from a more advanced race with stronger bodies; she's smart, beautiful, and can control the elements! Kirby gets her just right: she exudes power and confidence and a slightly alien nature:



But here is a picture that's just like a photo. It's just an ordinary person! 



This is not Crystal! In my opinion

After a good nights sleep, I now recall, according to that long ago article I read (probably in the Comics Journal), that another artist heavily reliant on swipes in the early 1970s was Rich Buckler. Again many,many instances were provided.

Buckler and Adkins both are fine artists and capable of turning out good product. But constantly using other people's art-and I mean constantly- is theft without the proper acknowledgement. A writer plagerizing someone else's work but changing a few words or names for large portions of a piece would not get a free pass from the public. Why should an artist?

I tend to look at Wally Wood as "excused" here, because poses and panel composition were a very small part of his total package (IE his drawings were just unearthly beautiful.)  

Still, he's probably the only guy I can think of on the list of the top fifty most important mainstream American comics artists who used a bunch of swipes.  Buckler and Brunner, ferinstance,  were really big deals in their day, but their reputation hasn't really been maintained, and now they're both fairly minor footnotes.

Using a lot of swipes might keep you off the "Greatest of All Time" list, unless you're Wally Wood?  

The artist most famous for copying others' work without attribution has to be Roy Lichtenstein. What he did goes beyond swiping to plagiarism, IMHO.

Almost-swipes feel worse to me.  "It's not a swipe because I moved the guy's leg ten degrees."  If you're gonna steal, fine, steal but own up to it.  Supposedly Dan Adkins and Wally Wood were both always open and honest about swiping, which makes me respect 'em more .  

Ooh. But he's completely changing the context that the art was presented in, and I think that has real value as a thought experiment.    Plus he's freely acknowledging he did swipes.) If nothing else it gave Russ Heath and others some nice free publicity. And Russ (at least) doesn't seem TOO mad about it.

I've never heard that Lichtenstein acknowledged the original artists in any way. People have done decades worth of detective work to track down the original images that Roy copied, precisely because Lichtenstein wasn't admitting that he'd copied anything.