Claremont was famous in the '80s for treating female characters like actual, grown-up people. And bless him for it! His X-ladies and the supporting cast were a welcome relief from the stereotypical damsel in distress or bewitching temptress stereotypes.

The Sentinels rocked too.

I appreciate her more in the show.  She seems to be pretty awesome when push comes to shove (but I am only getting ready to start episode 3 of season 2, so things could change, I guess?).

Oh, yeah!

Scott was my guy, but the right person won that fight. Ororo was not only an excellent leader, but had proven her outstanding character by overcoming the loss of her powers and emerging from the ordeal even stronger than before. Scott was trying to remain the X-Men's leader for the wrong reasons.

In his defense, he must have come to realize that at the end. When Ororo removed his visor, he shut his eyes and admitted defeat instead of blasting her into the wall. Not that it would have made him very popular to win that way, of course, but that's what a petty man would have done.

Man, that brings me back to an era where such things actually mattered... when decisions taken in one issue had important repercussions five years down the line. Today (and that's the old curmudgeon in me talking) it feels like we have the hero killed one issue, the universe destroyed the next, the whole line rebooted the issue after that and everyone being replaced by time-displaced dopplegängers for the relaunch of the mag. Grumblegripegrumblegripegrumblegripe! 

You picked a great time to leave. The series really went down the tubes after that, IMHO.

Well, that was part of it.  Wolverine and Mariko's wedding was sabotaged, after all of the events of the mini-series, I didn't like the new art, and the story was tedious.  I wasn't overly fond of the return of Mastermind, just before, as it seemed like a rehash of Dark Phoenix.  We had already gone through it with X-Men/New Teen Titans, though that was alternate world stuff, so it was cool.  I just felt like Claremont was out of ideas, afraid of mature relationships and the whole cycle was just repeating itself.  I was aided by going off to college and money being tight (though not tight enough that I didn't read other comics) and just made a break with it.  Didn't miss it, as Claremont continued his obsession with Alien and the art just seemed to get worse and worse; or at least, far enough away from what I enjoyed.  Thankfully, Classic X-Men started up not too much later and I could revisit the days when everything was forming and being improvised, including all of the stuff I missed.  That was my X-Men fix, for the next few years, until it caught up with where I had the complete issues.

The early days were more fun, as they just kind of tried things out, doing short pieces, while slowly developing larger stories.  For instance, when Eric the Red shows up, we kind of have single issue stories, but the mystery of Eric and whatever brainwashing of Havoc and Polaris happened, and then we got something else, and a bit more, whether it was a scene aboard the Starjammer or Xavier's dreams of Lilandra.  Then, they went full-on Star wars, with the Shi'ar and Byrne came on board, and it turned epic.  Byrne may have helped turn it into The X-Men; but, I preferred the swashbuckling stories of Dave Cockrum.  Don't get me wrong, I love Dark Phoenix and all of that; but, it lost a sense of fun, which only seemed to turn up occasionally, when they played baseball, and when Kitty told bedtime stories.