Thanks for the notice.

Repeating what I said over on H's blog: I was too busy out in the real world from late Saturday on through tonight, I hadn't seen this. I knew he was in bad straits due to diabetes, (from one of your earlier, pass-along posts I believe) though, but he'd dropped off my screens after that.

I had no personal connection to him, and in the long run I came to appreciate his design and general storytelling skills but not much else, I'm a little sad to say. His line style never improved a story for me, and remained something for the writer to overcome.

Cockrum pencils showing up on a title were never something I was happy about. I suspect that if I were to search his credits and then look at each series to see who he took over from I'd find some instance where he was an improvement over the previous artist, but at the moment I'm unaware of such. I mostly recall that X-Men came alive visually for me when Byrne took over and it felt like a huge step backwards when he returned to resume the chores in issue 144.

Still, dying from diabetic complications, worse still at 63, that's a dreadful shame.