Sure, he worked on UNCANNY X-MEN for that long, but he constantly changed the characters and the dynamics of the book. By the time he departed there was little left of what we’d seen in GIANT-SIZED X-MEN 1.

We need to remember that the marketplace was undergoing a major change. The Direct Sales Market, created to sell back issues, began to move into a greater position of power. Realizing that product sold thru the DSM was almost pure profit, the publishers began catering more and more to that venue. And that venue was increasingly controlled by fans, who assumed their tastes represented the marketplace as a whole.

It was a topsy turvy time, and the ultimate madness came when the publishers shifted ALL their products into the DSM. This eliminated the impulse purchase, on which publishers had been dependent for decades, and created an environment in which potential new readers had to make a conscious decision to seek out and buy comics.