Ah, "Comics Feature"... In its last year of publication, I illustrated Mike Benton's "For Fun & Profit" articles, in addition to doing some other illustrations for the publisher. I was still in high school at the time, and was paid very little, but it was cool to see my work published on a national level. And, relating to the thread, I did the interior illustrations for "Critics Choice File presents The X-Men" issues 1 & 2, from the same publisher. The cover to the first issue features Jean Grey in her multiple idenitities:

Critics Choice on eBay. (NOT my auction, I only present the link to show the cover)

I didn't draw the covers. Oddly enough, that first issue cover has Dark Phoenix, but that issue only covers "Giant-Size X-Men" #1 and "Uncanny X-Men #94 through #110. The following issue covers "The Dark Phoenix Saga" (and I did a better job on the art in that issue, too).

Here's the cover to the second issue of "Critics Choice File featuring the X-Men." It's a JB drawing that I believe was first published in black and white in "The Art of John Byrne"...

Critics Choice #2

I concede that the public disagrees, as sales increased after JB left.

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I've joked -- in a "kidding on the square" kind of way -- that I must have been holding Chris back, since the real burst of sales came after I left. But the sad reality is, we had no idea, at the time, what was really driving the sales of successful books. The speculators had arrived, and their presence completely skewed the numbers.

When Stan and Jack were doing, say, FANTASTIC FOUR, they knew that the (roughly) 400,000 units they were selling each month could be mostly depended upon to represent 400,000 warm bodies. When UNCANNY reached that number (and went on to even higher) after I left, there was much concern over the fact that we had no way to measure the actual number of people buying the books. How many were buying multiple copies, as "investments"? How many multiple copies were they buying? If UNCANNY X-MEN sold 400,000, did that mean 350,000 people? Or 300,000? Or 200,000? Or even less??

This is, of course, precisely why the Industry crashed. The Publishers began pandering to the Speculators, full time, doing stunts and high-priced "special" issues that drove away the regular customers. I've told before of doing a signing at a local store the day the "Death of Superman" issue came out. The manager/owner was taking the books out of the box and marking them $40. He claimed if he did not do this he would "lose money". In fact, at worst he would only make LESS THAN HE EXPECTED, which is in no way the same as "losing money". But the real problem was that for many of his customers, loyal fans who had followed the character and title for years, this latest stunt from DC was merely the NEXT ISSUE. Being confronted with a $40 price tag, many of those customers were forced to make a choice.

As we saw, when the speculators lost interest and left, virtually overnight, that choice was one faced and made by many READERS. They left. And when things returned to "normal", instead of sales going back to the levels they'd held before the madness, they plunged far below.

Which, in my Cassandra-like way, was exactly what I had PREDICTED would happen.

Just after JB's departure i thought there was a huge drop in quality.

While love Cockrum on is Nightcrawler mini series and thought his original X-Men run was good, i wasn't a fan of his art on the second one, or of his additions, like the lovecraftian Magneto island to the second run. To say nothing of Kitty's costume.

I began to enjoy really the series again with the brood saga at the end during the last few issues of Dave's run.

What for me bought it back to the level of quality it had during JB's day, was the story in japan, drawn by Paul Smith, starring Rogue and Wolverine against Viper and the Silver Samurai. To this day those two issues are still one of my all time favorite X-Men strories.

After that came JRjr, at first i didn't like the changers in his art style, but then we got the story of Rogue in the SHIELD Helicarer, and i loved this story and JRjr's new style began to grow on me more and more. I also loved the dirrection the book took during the JRjr days. The only thing i did hate was Magneto's ridiculous new purple costume with the big M on it. 

After that the book had highs and lows. I enjoyed the artstyle of Marc Silvestri, but not necessarily all the stories in those days,with the split team and the australian stuff.

When Jim Lee came on the book, i loved his style and thought he was the new JB.

Strangely it lasted only until Claremont "leaved " the book. After that i saw a drop in quality even in Jim Lee's art style.

The first three issues, with Claremont on script, had fantastic Jim Lee art.

After that, and i mean the following month, the art just seemed... sloppy.

Uncomplete layouts with quick inks on it.

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I had virtually no imput or control. My only contribution, really, was insisting that if Bishop (a character ordered created by Marketing!!!) had to be from "an alternate future", he at least be from the same one created by "Days of Future Past".

As most of you probably know, when I plotted that story originally, it was most definitely NOT meant to create a split in the timeline (Hey look! The X-Men FAILED again!!), but Chris managed to make it so by slipping in a couple of captions that actually had nothing whatsoever to do with what I had drawn. As writer, years later, I figured as long as we were already lumbered with one "alternate future", there was absolutely no justification for creating another one!

(My scripting on one of those issues is used by some as "proof" of my being a racist. In one scene, Bobby Drake muses that Scott Summers made a better leader than Storm and, apparently forgetting it was my suggestion that made Storm team leader back when I was still plotting and drawing the book, some chose to pare Iceman's comment down to him thinking Ororo was a poor leader BECAUSE SHE WAS BLACK.)