I don't know about that. In the latter half of his run, Mantlo was just writing AF for the paycheck and relying on his editor to feed him ideas.
Additionally, all of the subsequent writers contributed both good and bad (sometimes terrible) things to AF, but, I don't believe that anyone has ever gotten it "right" except Byrne.
My favorite thing about AF was that they had their own thing and their own vibe. I liked that it was more character-oriented and more quirky with the more focused smaller storylines until the larger building subplot escalated into a full team adventure.