Re: Loved his character designs..
Yeah I really like his Thing, Doom, and Captain America as well. Especially his Doom, who came off as being every bit as regal and majestic as he should be. (Although as far as classic marvel artists go, for Captain America, I would give the edge to Mike Zeck whose take on Cap I really, really loved..)
I'm not going to go into the disagreements and various falling outs that area said to have happened, as not being a fly on the wall at these things I don't think I'm qualified to judge what exactly went on there. There's a great line from Thor in the mutant massacre issues of that title.. (373-374?) where he says to Cyclops that he learned a long time ago not to judge a man by what the newspapers says about him. And I honestly believe that that sort of caution should these days probably apply to about 99% of behind the scenes disagreements 'reported' on the Internet.
In other words..If we weren't there, and didn't know what exactly happened, then we probably shouldn't jump to conclusions. I prefer to let people's work speak for them. And there's been very few comic issues I've encountered where I didn't like John Byrne's artwork, and that's good enough for me..