I bought X-Men #137 off the stand, the day it came out as a very-eager- to-read-it-13 year old. And while I agree, then and now, the published ending was much more dramatic/emotional, I still believe that the stories following would have been much better had Phoenix survived as originally intended. The last great X-Men issue was #143 and I'll even go so far as to say #144 was ok. I only kept buying the book because I loved the Kitty Pryde character and that love would keep me buying the book regularly only until around issue # 175

Cockrum's art was okay on #145 onward but the stories were pretty terrible. I hated the whole Dr. Doom story (ROGUE STORM -- DARE WE DO IT AGAIN? I thought that was dumb even as a thirteen year old), #148-149 were just embarrassing, especially that hideous Kitty Pryde costume. #150 was okay because it had Magneto as the villain but again, I had always wished they went along with the original story because the planned #150 by Claremont/Byrne would have been killer.

 In fact, the whole storyline would have been amazing; the classic run would have been X-Men #129-150 instead of just #129-137. And I also remember reading what was supposed to happen to Wolverine had John stayed on, which also would have been a zillion times more interesting that what saw print. 

To this day, the last page of Phoenix: The Untold Story is one of the most moving, emotional pieces of art I've ever seen. Seeing Scott holding her shoes as Jean is leaning over, touching that lily in the pond, what an image!

In short, readers got the dramatic ending to # 137 but in trade, received a less than stellar run of issues following and the beginning of the whole death as a revolving door/event thing. Personally, I don't think Shooter should be patting himself on the back so hard, especially since Jean Grey ended up coming back a few more times anyway. 

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That single panel is a fairly concise summation of a whole lot of things that went wrong with the X-Men after I left.

Tho, again, who am I to say "wrong"? Since sales continued to soar, obviously Chris & Co. were doing SOMETHING right!

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Granted, this is filtered through a 10-year-old's exposure to the work, but I think it's a part of what made Dave Cockrum my favorite X-Men artist, just above JB. Though I felt that JB's work on the title was superior in several ways in a technical sense, DC had an element of "fun" to his work that I don't think JB quite mastered at that point in the late 70's. By some point in the 80's I feel that JB was able to get to that level, though.