Known as Kitty, or Shadowcat, for most of her life, Kate Pryde is now a mutant of some renown: captain of the Marauder; Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Corporation; a member of the Quiet Council that rules the mutant island Krakoa. For much of her life she was, instead, the relatable kid . Kate can phase (pass through) almost any solid object: she can go places other heroes cannot (she can also rip your heart out—but she won’t).
Her Jewish identity, white suburban childhood, strong attachments to mentors (Wolverine; Storm) and long-term all-but-on-panel queer romances (Illyana; Rachel) have sparked some of her most important stories. Her wishes to do good, to take control of her life, and to transcend (without rejecting) her background as an A student have shaped her life, though her boyfriends (most named Piotr, or Peter, or Pete) sometimes derail it.
Kitty made her debut at age 13 ¾, in Uncanny X-Men 129 (1980); Chris Claremont and John Byrne—and their editors—wanted a point of view character for younger readers. Eager and awkward among her in-universe peers, Kitty became the first in a series of fan-favorite mutant teens, including her sometime allies the New Mutants and the sassier, less studious Jubilee.
Kitty—now Kate—grew into new roles on the UK-based team Excalibur, as a student at the University of Chicago, as a team leader, and finally as the head of the X-Men’s school. Well-suited to educational institutions, she’s nonetheless tried repeatedly to make a life elsewhere, on her own or with partners, in Britain or in outer space.
Geeky, outspoken, bad at fashion (though she keeps on trying), and very, very good at computers and physics, Kate could pass as human if she wanted: instead, she uses her appearance and background to make a positive difference, and to represent mutants, in the wider world.
She could be every good girl who wanted to be something more, every teen whose queerness is “not just a phase,” every ultra-brainy kid who wondered when it was OK to have a body, every Jewish American who thinks about Jewish diaspora, and every otherwise privileged LGBTQ+ fan who wonders what our privilege really means. She’s also the first to say on panel what we all know:
These are our favorite stand-alone Kate Pryde stories, not the most famous, and certainly not the biggest turning points in her fictional life. A list of those would certainly include, along with some of the titles below, Uncanny X-Men #143 (“Guess What Just Came Down the Chimney?”); the Mekanix mini-series (Kate’s time at the U of C); and the controversial, even egregious, Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men #1, in which noted Avengers writer and bad human being Joss Whedon attempts to remove his favorite piece from the board.
Gold
Hope You Survive The Experience
November 1980
- Uncanny X-Men #139
- Chris Claremont & John Byrne
- John Byrne
- Terry Austin
- Glynis Wein
- Tom Orzechowski
The Plot
Kitty settles into her new life at the Xavier School.
Why We Love It
Not the first issue with Kitty, but the first one built around the character, this is where a new fan needs to start. When people say “hope you survive the experience,” they’re citing (whether they know it or not) the iconic cover, which led into Kitty’s first days as a way too young X-Man, giddy about her gifted child status and yet hoping for something, anything, that let her remain a teen among other teens: Stevie Hunter’s dance studio, for one (where she would later meet Doug Ramsey).
Kitty also encounters the Danger Room, wants to befriend Nightcrawler despite his appearance (“I like her too much to give up,” he thinks), and starts to see Ororo Munroe as the mother-figure she will long be. “She reasons as calmly, as sensibly as Professor X and yet for all that she is still a child struggling to hold on to her childhood,” Storm thinks, and as usual Storm is right.
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Silver
Kitty & Nightcrawler In Space
March – June 1982
- Uncanny X-Men #155-158
- Chris Claremont
- Dave Cockrum
- Bob Wiacek
- Glynis Wein & Don Warfield
- Joe Rosen & Janice Chiang
The Plot
Kitty and Nightcrawler, held as hostages on the Shi’ar space empire’s flagship, must thwart the imperial usurper’s plans.
Why We Love It
Kate’s first space adventure also becomes her first extended pairing with Kurt Wagner. It also explores her crush on Colossus. She gets to emote, and explore, and have fun.
Best of all, this is the storyline where our Kate encounters the infamous costume generator: she’s in a lime-green ballgown. She’s in a white-and-gold rough draft of Jean Grey’s first Phoenix togs. She’s Robin Hood! She’s… Darth Vader?
And she’s holding Chekhov’s gun: what looks like a very gendered bit of silliness becomes the stratagem that saves the team.
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Whose Life Is It, Anyway?
January 1984
- Uncanny X-Men #180
- Chris Claremont
- John Romita Jr.
- Dan Green & Bob Wiacek
- Glynis Wein
- Tom Orzechowski
The Plot
Ororo’s gone punk and Kitty—to whom Ororo was “like my mom and best friend”—feels betrayed.
Why We Love It
Growing up means giving adults permission to change. “For the first time in my adult life,” Ororo says, “I can feel—to the fullest extent of my being.” If that’s not a coming-out story, tell me what is.
It’s also a nearly combat-free issue where the versatile, expressive John Romita Jr., assisted by Dan Green and Bob Wiacek, gets to draw emotionally responsive, easy-to-follow versions of Kitty and Storm and Xavier and Doug and Colossus and Logan, caught up in Chris Claremont’s B-plot.
Doug and Kitty are teen geniuses together, close mates and video game virtuosi, and burly well-meaning Piotr wonders whether Kitty will ever be happy with a peasant boy like him.
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‘Til Death Do Us Part
June 2018
- X-Men Gold #30
- Marc Guggenheim
- David Marquez
- David Marquez
- Matthew Wilson
- Cory Petit
The Plot
Kitty and Colossus are finally getting married. Today. For real. Or are they?
Why We Love It
Writer Marc Guggenheim’s otherwise egregious nostalgia for the Claremont-Byrne era gave him a good sense of Kitty, who keeps trying—and failing—to get away from her role as the trainee who needs a mentor, a boyfriend, a school. We revisit Kitty’s iconic first meeting with Piotr and Ororo, and go back to their almost-as-iconic first breakup. And then… and then.
There are no words for that scene on the roof with Illyana. No words, except those on the unparaphrasable page: the moon’s out, the bottle’s empty, the die is cast. Penciller David Marquez and colorist Matthew Wilson do their very best work, and everyone knows or should know what those few starlit panels mean.
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The New Phase
August – September 2020
- Marauders #11-12
- Gerry Duggan
- Stefano Caselli & Matteo Lolli
- Stefano Caselli & Matteo Lolli
- Edgar Delgado
- Cory Petit
The Plot
Kate comes back from the dead, with Emma Frost’s help.
Why We Love It
It took almost forty years of real-world writing, and [best not to ask] years in-universe, but Kate Pryde has finally moved on. It’s like she died and came back to life. Oh, right: she did. “She doesn’t smash through barriers,” Emma explains, “she ignores them.”
And then Emma reaches into the egg and pulls out her onetime victim and present-day friend: dayenu.
And then Illyana appears with a mariachi band, and a song about long-secret love, and Kurt, “my rabbi,” understands how Jewish Kate is and must be: dayenu.
And then Kate gets a tattoo and kisses a girl… Who looks very much like Illyana. Kate Pryde has been many things in her time, and the issue’s symbolism recaps them: now she’s a captain, and this is her ship.
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Bronze
Monster Island Rescue
April 2015
- Uncanny X-Men #33
- Brian Michael Bendis
- Kris Anka
- Kris Anka
- Antonio Fabela
- Joe Caramagna
The Plot
Illyana and Kate renew their gal-pal friendship by rescuing a young mutant on Monster Island.
Why We Love It
The open-secret friends-to-lovers romance between Kate/ Kitty Pryde and Illyana Rasputin/Rasputina is the best, sweetest, most compelling in all of comics (don’t @ me). They have each other’s back forever, they’re bedmates and playfellows (like Shakespeare’s Rosalind and Celia), and writers who understand them know that neither will ever let the other down.
That said, it’s a romance of moments, of single pages. Almost no whole stories show the duo together. The modern exception is this single-issue, happy-ending-focused break in the grim long story of Cyclops’s revolutionary team. Illyana whisks her best friend away from the northern wastes to where a mutant child needs their attention. Kris Anka’s cartoony, expressive art brings out the childhood friendship in these purposeful adults, and their lovely self-contained adventure brings the young Bo the security that every mutant deserves.
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Into The Woods
August 2018
- X-Men Gold Annual #2
- Seanan McGuire
- Marco Failla
- Marco Failla
- Rachelle Rosenberg
-
letters
The Plot
Kitty goes back to the summer camp she loved before her mutant powers emerged. Can she—and should she—fit in?
Why We Love It
X-characters often have to choose between life as a mutant superhero and life as something else: in this case, a charmingly normal kid. That choice animates good stories about Kate in college (Mekanix), and Kate quitting the team (X-Men 110), but it’s never been better framed than in Seanan McGuire and Marco Failla’s flashback one-shot, in which Kitty solves a Scooby-Doo-style mystery and gets, or bestows, her first kiss. “Turns out having fun is like riding a bike,” she muses. “You don’t forget. You just don’t realize you remember.” Same holds for identifying with her as a teen. McGuire’s 2018 script also seems to be—depressingly, shockingly—the first time a woman has written a story with Kate in the leading role.
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The Marriage of True Minds
Release Date(s) month/year
- Excalibur #13-14
- Chris Claremont
- Alan Davis
- Paul Neary
- Glynis Oliver
- Tom Orzechowski & Agustin Mas
The Plot
In one of the interdimensional adventures that make up the famous (and famously long) Cross-Time Caper, a fairy-tale royal family insists that Kitty accept her role as princess.
Why We Love It
Excalibur at its best—under Claremont and Alan Davis, and then just Davis—was a true team book: Kate’s solo moments tended towards parody, saying more about their genre (girls’ school story! Hitler-wins timeline! creepy seduction!) than about Shadowcat as a character.
That said, the billowing blue-on-blue Davis costume remains the best she’s ever worn. It’s a great run for Kitty and her pet dragon Lockheed, their one-sided banter, his loyalty, and his fiery breath. It’s a run that’s even neater the second time through, when you know the secret origins of the silver levitating gadget called Widget and you stop expecting every subplot to make sense. And it’s rarely more fun than in this cartoony monarchy. A child prince proposes marriage to Kitty, and his servants take her prisoner, and she…. accepts. But why?
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Cat & Mouse
March 1999
- X-Men Unlimited #22
- Brian K. Vaughan
- Patrick Gleason
- Tom Nguyen
- Matt Webb
- Comicraft
The Plot
Marrow– the bony , grumpy, outcast mutant– has to team up with Kitty, the popular girl.
Why We Love It
Kate can inspire protective instincts and fellow feelings (not to mention raging crushes), from mutants and baseline humans, in her world and ours. She even got a sweet, semi-normal childhood: she sleeps with her teddy bear. As for her powers, they’re literally about passing: she can get through anything and go anywhere.
Marrow lives at the opposite extreme: she really has been hated and feared. Can a mutant from privilege, like Kate, ever understand? Will the two of them ever get along? They’d better get if they’re going to defeat Flag-Smasher’s plot to blow up the New York City subway—an environment Marrow knows well. Featuring narration by Marrow herself, chunky, expressive 1990s art from Gleason, Nguyen and Webb, and an uncommonly thoughtful take on passing privilege and the mutant metaphor from a not-yet-famous Brian K. Vaughan.
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Stephanie Burt
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard and the author of several books of poetry and literary criticism, most recently Don’t Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems (Basic, 2019). Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
