I picked up X-Men at issue 174.

I was aware of the X-Men from my neighbor, starting with issue 171.

I was reading Star Wars, Amazing Spider-Man, and The Fantastic Four at that time.

All of the Dark Phoenix stuff at that point made me search for the JB back issues.

I knew I enjoyed the stories and the characters on the FF at that time.

....waitaminute!  It's the SAME ARTIST...

And a Byrne fan was born.

I stopped reading X-Men around 217.  I really enjoyed the stories from 108-210 (the Mutant Massacre).  Claremont removed my favorite characters from the book.

I still don't understand why editorial allowed that to happen.

Dazzler, Gambit, Longshot as X-Men?  Please.

Hidden Years was the first X-Men run I've enjoyed since then.

I sporadically pick up the X-Men every once in a while, hoping that I'll open the book and a Hidden Years or FX like story is inside.  I've been disappointed.

I never knew Stern was fired from Marvel. How'd that happen?

*******

Here's a link to a huge interview with Roger Stern.  The part dealing specifically with the firing is below.

http://www.marvelmasterworks.com/features/int_stern_1006_1.h tml

GK: All right, how did you end up at DC? Were you a little disillusioned with Marvel after a while?

RS: I wound up at DC because I was fired from the Avengers and no Marvel editor was returning my calls.

No, I take that back, I did get one call. Jim Salicrup had become the editor of the Spider-Man titles and he called me up and offered me work on Spectacular Spider-Man. But this was right after Spider-Man – well, Peter Parker – had gotten married to Mary Jane Watson, which I thought was a huge mistake for both characters. So I thanked Jim and asked him to give me a call if and when that fell apart.

But I wasn’t disillusioned with Marvel, so much as I was disappointed in the place. I’d been working steadily for them for nearly twelve years, turning out stories that I thought were pretty good. The readership seemed to agree, and I’d never gotten any complaints from any of my editors. But then, suddenly, it was all over.

I’d disagreed with one editorial suggestion about the Avengers line-up. My editor wanted a change that I thought distasteful, and I sent him a memo to that effect. I would have liked to have discussed the matter further, but I was never given a chance. Instead, I received a message that I was fired.

And then, I discovered that my exclusive Marvel contract was pretty much worthless. Thanks to some wording in the fine print, I was required to deliver so many pages of material to Marvel in a given time, but Marvel wasn’t required to give me any assignments. An interesting Catch-22. Fortunately, the contract also had an escape clause, so I exercised it and went calling on Mike Carlin, who by that time had landed at DC.

Here's a link to the Mark's Remark's from Avengers 288 to show the other perspective.

http://www.geocities.com/mh_prime/8802.html