Interesting article posted there.  Never saw it before.
I'll never agree with Claremont that his version of Jean is akin to the Thomas/Adams version.  That version is stronger in her use of powers, perhaps, but her basic personality was the same as earler..
Claremont's Jean, the characters mentioned a number of times how much she's changed.  I just think he writes REALLY strong women in general.

Also interesting all the different scenarios that were discussed.  I was unaware of several of them as well.

I picked up P:TUS back when it was first published.  I really appreciated that something like that had been put out at all.  I'd love to see more "Behind the Comics" features like that ... why things were done, other directions that were considered ... even done in a video interview format ala Classic Albums or Behind the Music.

"That may be the most subtle expression of "their old stuff was better" I have yet seen!"

No disrespect intended John - and it probably tells you more about me than it does about the industry.  I grew up in the era of you, Chris and Terry (X-men), you (FF / Superman), Miller (DD / Batman) and Simonson (Thor) so I guess i was more than a little spoilt and it resonates with me the most.

I've tried on more than occasion to get myself back into buying comics regularly and have failed....although I do need to pick up your new Next Men run!...some of my respect for that body of work is context (i was younger, less cynical, but still appreciated incredible art), some of it is nostalgia (the feel of getting the comics, the excitement of waiting to see what happened next etc) and part of it was being able to dive into a completely different universe just for an hour or so every month to see whats been going on.

Does anyone know if it'd be easy to get that Comics Feature posted in the last page?

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.