He would have died sooner. I say that only partly in jest. When he was going to retire, he wrote the last strip ahead of publication and people were wondering what it would be. It was basically a thank you to the fans. He died the day it ran in the papers.

Edit: he died the day before.

I used to think something similar of many of my favourite musicians who were making their best work in the 1970s.

The thing is that sometimes people crank out something amazing later in their career that no one saw coming.

So I say artists should do what they like whilst they still love doing it; leave the rest of the world to the job filtering the results into a "canon" of best work.