As I stated before, John Byrne was my favorite artist when I was a child. His work--though undoubtedly at least partially dictated by script/storyline--always contained elements of the tragic, of those fighting forces they cannot fully overcome, and this tragic motif, combined with Byrne's style of Adams-like realism mixed with Kirby/Kane-type dramatics, clicked with me on a personal level (which I'll delve into with my top two choices), and nothing clicked so much as did this cover.
Also, as I have mentioned, I lost 90% of my comics collection to silverfish. This one, however, I did not lose. This one, I kept in my room. I never stored it away with the rest of the comics because, to me, this one was special. Of course, the high regard I held for this comic wasn't solely based on cover appeal nor solely on Byrne's artwork. This story, to me, was--comics or not--the most realistic story I had read up into that point, and it reflected my own piss-and-vinegar view of the world. Yes, I thought, someone finally got it right. This is the way the world will end: tragically. Yet, there on the cover, is not a picture of Jean Grey dead...or dying...or a hand laid out with a cuff nearby...nor an all-black cover. Nope. The cover shows Jean Grey, along with one of two of my childhood heroes, fighting the end that she brought on herself. She did not go gently unto that goodnight, even though she knew the goodnight was sure to come. Philosophically, this cover (along with the story inside) rang truer to me (then) than any comic cover has since.
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