Originally Posted By: the G-man
Yeah, I prefer the "original" version of the sketch from nearly thirty years ago. Among other things, the original captures (with them just standing there) the individual personalities of the team members (regal Storm, defiant Wolverine, relaxed Banshee, solid Peter, alert Nightcrawler and leader Cyclops) much better than the grinning idiots in the new version.



Used as the cover for COMIC READER 167:







There was also a nice Marvel house-ad at the time of the Claremont/Byrne X-men run, that showed the old X-men and new X-men together.
A run that presented Byrne at the peak of his talent, to be sure. A beautiful house ad By Cockrum, that oddly was used to promote the Claremont/Byrne/Austin run, after Cockrum had left the series.



And odd also that Byrne never did a similar house ad for his own run.
In interviews at the time Byrne similarly expressed annoyance that there were Cockrum X-Men character heads in the upper left of covers for most of his run, as if it was still Cockrum's book and Byrne was just the fill-in guest artist for 4 years from 1977-1981.