By coincidence, the next time I dropped by editor Carl Potts' office, he was struggling with the layout for a Defenders cover. I causally asked if he would be interested in having me take a crack at it. He had me look the script over and, sitting on his office couch, doodled out a rough for the cover above. (I wish things always worked so smoothly in the comics world.)
He had Bill Sienkievicz do the inking. I was a bit skeptical of the decision since Bill's approach is/was radically different than mine but really liked the result.
See the printed cover