As a fan of much of Bill's work on INCREDIBLE HULK, ROM, and MICRONAUTS, I was pleased to see this in the works:

http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1987504

I admire many of Mantlo's stories, but he'd been accused of lifting plots long before his injury.  Marvel settled with Harlan Ellison over an issue of the HULK and the end of the Wraith storyline in MTU was cribbed from a fairly prominent SF story of the day.  (This was tacitly acknowledged in a letter column commenting on the issue in question, and a HULK letter column made an explicit apology for the Ellison piece.)  I don't know the truth behind the BWS allegation, and I don't think anyone can at this point, but it's not like there was no precedent.

I don't mean to impugn Mantlo personally and the sheer volume (and speed!) of his output makes such lapses understandable, but history is history.

*And I admire his later generous pro bono work as an attorney even more.

I always thought it was great that Bill Mantlo could get a long running series like ROM going based on a toy line that consisted of one toy.

The Dire Wraiths were (for me as a youngster at the time) some of the creepiest evil aliens in comics. I liked the way he tied them in to the Skrull history as well.

The work he did on Micronauts, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man and Spectacular Spider-Man could teach more than a few people about how to write good comics nowadays.

Y'know, ROM is one of those comics that many, many people of a certain age remember with great fondness, and that I never cared for very muchl.  I thought the set-up made things too easy on the writer in some  ways -- with bad guys that only the hero can identify, and a method of dealing with them that looks like summary execution, of COURSE you're going to have a put-upon hero with problems out the wazoo who must fight the good fight and be noble and all that cool stuff.  Plus, you can have a bad guy around every corner.  But I do understand why many liked it, and anything that had Sal B. inking his own pencils was OK with me.

In Mantlo's one major interview in TCJ, he says that Shooter re-plotted the first issue and established many guidelines for the series.  Mantlo's plot had to do with ROM being drawn to Earth by a coven of warlocks in England.  In the same interview, he said that ROM was the Silver Surfer "done right."

I preferred many of his fill-in issues and at least the first leg of his run on IRON MAN.  I also liked the Jack of Hearts character, before he suddenly sprouted the outer space origin.

Count me as someone who loves his run on THE INCREDIBLE HULK.  Coupled with Sal Buscema art, everything up until the last 30 or so issues is gold to me.  Loved it.  I was, and still am, a huge ROM and MICRONAUTS fan.  ROM just struck a chord with me, don't know why.  Maybe the writing/art combination with wonderful inks by Akin and Garvey?  A sci-fi comic that lasted longer than 12 issues?  The Dire Wraiths?  I dunno, but I loved the series.  MICRONAUTS too. Wildly fun, imaginative stuff.  I think both series are the way comics based on toys should be.  They never felt like they were trying to sell me the latest gizmo or character for MICRONAUTS and, although I know the ROM toy was a big failure, it never felt like it was based on a toy, rather on the imaginations of those involved. 

What happened to Mantlo hit me like a ton of bricks when I first heard it, and it still saddens me to this day.  Such a talent.  His story reminds me to never expect the next day, because it may never come.  Glad he's got such a body of work that is appreciated not only by those, like me, who grew up with it, but by those of a younger generation.  In that way, he'll always live on.