While it's the Chris Claremont/John Byrne material which is the heart of those eighty or so issues, there's plenty to enjoy beyond Byrne's departure. Dave Cockrum, who shepherded in the era of the "new" X-Men with Len Wein and then Claremont on writing chores, returned as series penciler with issue 145, and the first chunk of his second run was included in the second UNCANNY X-MEN OMNIBUS. As I discussed when I covered that book a couple years ago, once upon a time Marvel's Omnibuses followed a pretty strict routine of cramming a few previously published Marvel Masterworks volumes into one book and sending it off to the printers, with no regard to story flow. This resulted in UNCANNY OMNIBUS volume 1 ending in the middle of the "Dark Phoenix Saga".
Not so anymore! UNCANNY OMNIBUS 2 broke the trend and reprinted only a portion of the seventh UNCANNY X-MEN MASTERWORKS, stopping after issue 153. The reason, as we see here, was to avoid separating the long "Brood saga" into two books. With some interludes for other adventures, the Brood storyline runs all the way from UNCANNY 154 through 167! And, thanks to modern Marvel's more enlightened decision-makers, the entire epic is reprinted here.
