I really love "The Dark Phoenix Saga," so I re-read it recently. And I still consider it one of the greatest X-Men stories ever written. There's so much to like about it:
It features one of my favorite team line-ups: Cyclops, Nightcrawler (my all-time favorite X-Man), Colossus, Wolverine (before he got really lame and over-exposed), Storm, and Phoenix. There's guest appearances by Beast (my 2nd all-time favorite X-Man) and Angel (before Apocalypse gave him those metallic wings). And this was also the first appearance of Kitty Pryde. The only other X-Men line-up that can really challenge this was the one that was operating out of the Australian outback (Havok, Wolverine, Colossus, Dazzler, Storm, Longshot, Rogue, Psylocke).
It was written by Chris Claremont and penciled by John Byrne.
It has cool villains, like the Hellfire Club: Sebastian Shaw (can re-direct kinetic energy so the harder you hit him, the harder he'll be able to hit you back); the White Queen (telepathic powers); Harry Leland (he was really cool, he had the mutant power to increase your mass, so he could crush you under your own weight); and Donald Pierce (he was basically just a cyborg with super-strength).
Then the X-Men traveled into outer space and fought the Shi'ar Imperial Guard (led by Gladiator; he was a funny looking guy because he was basically drawn as a blue-skinned Superman...with a huge mohawk) on the blue area of the moon.
My only complaint is that when Jean Grey died at the end, she should have stayed dead. She sacrificed herself in case she was ever re-possessed by the Dark Phoenix and tried to destroy the universe, but they resurrected her years later with some dumb explanation about the Phoenix cloning her body and preserving the real Jean at the bottom of the ocean, or something like that.
And I really love the cover artwork of the trade paperback that all the issues are recollected in (first picture at top of the page).
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