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Ha! You got me!

Ha!  I have no love for anything Sh'ar.

With the whole Mother/daughter of Galatus nonsense --- I think it is OK to say that when lesser writers get a hold of established characters the results are pretty much garbage.  Think about the post-Howard Conan novels of de Camp et al.

The original stories were so good, but trying to keep that essence static and continually crank out month books of quality is ALMOST impossible.  We are here celebrating Mr. Byrne facility at doing this because it is so exceedingly rare.  Most are crap.  His success comes from a place of both talent and an obvious love to the original work.  Almost all the modern takes on characters created 60 years ago are either so incredibly disassociated (and lesser) than the original as to be unrecognizable, or pathetically unimaginative.  Truly, it's a nearly impossible task.  Forget what you know about comic books, and just think of sequels in every other medium. 99% are weak, sad, echos (or totally disrespectful from someone high on their own ego).

When we read ELSEWHEN it's real magic.  The original creator continuing the original characters in-form---wiping away decades of distortion, mangling, and incompetent writing.  Absolutely priceless and never to be seen again on this Earth.  It was akin to discovering Tolkien had written a second trilogy and put it in a time-capsule.

You are 100% correct Ron, I am speaking quite loosely.  Stan & Jack created Cyclopes, Marvel Girl, Professor X etc. --- and I think JB works hard to stay true to their original characters.

But in the case of the All-New Uncanny X-men (:P), I don't think the characters of Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, and even to a lesser extent Banshee (but not Nightcrawler!), were only vaguely formed when he started working on the book.  I just mentioned in another thread how those Savage Land stories really stick out.  I think that was because the characters and group dynamics really jelled for the first time during those issues.  Sure, Claremont gave them some broody introspection and occasionally a weird agenda, but JB's guiding hand can be seen (through ELSEWHEN especially, but even his other work as well) to be the one that helped define them.  To me, they were "born" then and "lived" for about 30 issues before they were possessed by alien entities who acted by-and-large entirely differently.

So in that loose sense, I feel he was the true parent.  Claremont's subsequent mishandling and distortions of the character's personas (e.g. punk Storm and turning everyone into Wolverine, and Wolverine into the Buddha) shows he had no conscious idea of what he was doing.  The characters weren't speaking through him, he was just riffing off on any idea that entered his head and forced the dialog out of whomever's mouth was convenient at the moment.