Just spoke with Marvel artist Marie Severin, who was back from attending the wake for John Tartaglione. She reminded me that John had recently been inking the Spider-Man newspaper strip (the daily, not the Sunday) over the pencil art of Larry Lieber. And she said that despite a recent battle with throat cancer that had robbed Tartag of his ability to speak, he managed to finish a week of strips the day before he died. There's some real devotion to duty there, and it's nice to report that John was a working artist right until the end.