Kitty Pryde

• 1. A Borrowed Name

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  Kitty Pryde is a Marvel Comics mutant who can pass through solid walls, and she owes her name to a real person. In 1973, an art student at Canada's Alberta College of Art and Design met a classmate named Kitty Pryde. His name was John Byrne. He told her he liked her name and asked permission to use it. He also made her a promise. The first original comics character he created would be named after her.

  Years later, the name appeared on a teenage newcomer in The Uncanny X-Men. She began as the youngest member of a team of older heroes. Over four decades she became a ninja-trained fighter, a space adventurer and a team leader. This documentary asks how a name taken from an art school classmate grew into one of the best-loved figures in the X-Men universe. It also asks what that fame has meant for the woman who carried the name first.

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• 2. Made To Order

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  Marvel editors issued an order that the X-Men series should depict a school for mutant children, and Kitty Pryde was the answer. She first appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #129, dated January 1980. Writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne presented her as a highly intelligent 13-year-old. Byrne drew her face to slightly resemble a young Sigourney Weaver.

  Claremont said part of her personality came from a real child. Julie was the daughter of Louise Simonson, who edited the X-Men books.

  In issue #139, Claremont and Byrne made Kitty a full member of the team. She was the youngest ever to join, and the writers treated her as a kid sister to the older heroes. Her youth also served a storytelling purpose, because it gave the established characters someone to be measured against.

  Issues #141 and #142 put her at the center of the Days of Future Past storyline. The consciousness of her older self, called Kate, travels back from a dystopian future and takes over Kitty's body. Kate wants the X-Men to help her prevent an eventual mass extermination of mutants.

  Sprite was only the first of Kitty's aliases. She also used Ariel, and she cycled through several uniforms before settling on a black-and-gold costume.

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• 3. Recruited at Thirteen

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  Kitty's mutant powers announced themselves with headaches at age thirteen in Deerfield, Illinois, where she was born to Carmen and Theresa Pryde. Two rival recruiters soon came calling. Charles Xavier wanted her for his school, and Emma Frost, the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, wanted her for her own cause. Kitty was unnerved by Frost, who seemed to look at her as if she were "something good to eat."

  Xavier and the three X-Men escorting him won her over far more easily. Ororo Munroe became her friend almost at once and explained who the group really were. Before the conversation ended, armored mercenaries in Frost's pay attacked the party, which included Wolverine and Colossus.

  The X-Men won the fight but fell to the White Queen's telepathy. Kitty had been separated from the others and escaped capture. She contacted Cyclops, Phoenix and Nightcrawler, and with help from Dazzler they freed their teammates from the Hellfire Club.

  Back in Illinois, Kitty's parents had heard nothing for more than a day. They knew only that she had left with Xavier's students to get a soda, and that the soda shop had reportedly been blown up. They were furious with Xavier. Phoenix settled the matter by using her telepathy to erase their memories and plant false ones. Their attitude reversed, and Kitty enrolled with their blessing.

  Colossus was the target of Kitty's first crush, and his little sister Illyana Rasputin became a close friend. Kitty was at first uneasy around Nightcrawler and other mutants with physical deformities, but she overcame that and grew close to him. Lockheed, an intelligent alien resembling a dragon, followed her home after a mission in outer space. He is extremely loyal to her, and the two share a psychic bond.

  Wolverine became a mentor despite his gruff manner, and Storm came to see Kitty as the daughter she never had. Xavier threatened to move her to the New Mutants, a team of younger mutants, but it never happened. She mocked them as the "X-Babies."

  Her romance with Colossus was brief. He fell for an alien woman named Zsaji, whom he met on the Beyonder's planet during the first Secret Wars. His confession that he loved Zsaji hurt Kitty deeply and ended the budding relationship.

  A local boy named Doug Ramsey from Salem Central also befriended her. He later joined the New Mutants as Cypher, and the two stayed close until his death.

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• 4. Ogun and the Morlocks

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  The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, written by Claremont and published in 1984-85, turned the girl into a fighter. In it, the ninja demon Ogun possesses her. He gives her a virtual lifetime of martial arts training. He also brainwashes her into an assassin and sends her to attack Wolverine. With Wolverine's help she resists, and the pair form a strong teacher and student bond while defeating Ogun. Kitty returns to the X-Men no longer the innocent girl they knew, and she officially takes the codename Shadowcat.

  The Mutant Massacre then cost her control of her own body. While trying to save Rogue, Kitty was badly hurt by an energy spear wielded by Harpoon. Afterward she could not become solid again. Where she once had to make an effort to phase, she now had to will herself solid.

  Moira MacTaggert tended her on Muir Island. She kept Kitty from fading out of existence entirely but could do no more.

  The X-Men asked Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four for help. He refused, unsure he could succeed. They turned instead to Richards's enemy Doctor Doom. That choice split the heroes, and the Fantastic Four fought the X-Men to stop the treatment. Franklin Richards, helped by Lockheed, finally brought both teams to their senses. Kitty was saved and later recovered full control of her power.

  The X-Men then sacrificed themselves to defeat the Adversary and were resurrected within the same issue. They chose to let the world believe they were still dead, which meant avoiding even their friends and family. Believing them dead, Kitty and Nightcrawler joined Rachel Summers, Captain Britain and Meggan to form the British team Excalibur. She stayed with that team for roughly ten years.

  In Britain she dated former Black Air agent Pete Wisdom. The agency S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited her to repair the computer system of its flying headquarters. There she found that Ogun's spirit had infiltrated the machines, and with Wolverine's help she purged it. Her attraction to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age made her doubt her bond with Wisdom, and she ended the relationship.

  When Excalibur dissolved, Kitty, Nightcrawler and Colossus returned to the X-Men.

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• 5. How Phasing Works

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  Kitty slips her atomic particles through the gaps between the atoms of any solid object she enters. The comics call the process phasing, or quantum tunneling. She and the object can briefly merge without interacting, and neither is harmed afterward. She passes through at the same speed she was moving before she entered.

  Early on she could not breathe while inside an object. Later she could travel underground or phase whole buildings through the Earth's surface without holding her breath. Phased, she does not truly walk on the ground. She interacts with the molecules of air above surfaces, which lets her climb and descend and seem to walk on air.

  Passing through electronics disrupts the flow of electrons. Machines malfunction or break, and a living body can suffer shock and unconsciousness if she concentrates the right way. While phased, she is immune to most physical attacks and has some resistance to telepathy.

  Her powers have limits. Adamantium can disorient her or cause pain. Some energy attacks, such as Harpoon's blast, left her unable to stay fully solid for months. Magic can hurt her even while intangible. A N'Garai demon's claws left no visible marks but caused her severe pain as they passed through her.

  She can also phase other people and objects if they stay in contact with her. That includes her clothing and objects with the mass of a small truck. She has threatened to leave people phased into a wall.

  Her control grew over the years. Originally she found it hard or impossible to phase only part of her body. In the Days of Future Past story, her older self managed to solidify just a shoulder. Under Joss Whedon's writing, Kitty could punch someone standing on the other side of a wall. She could even run through an armed opponent and snatch the weapon on the way.

  Phasing is not her only gift. Kitty is a genius in applied technology and computer science, a skilled pilot of piston and jet aircraft, and a professional-level dancer in ballet and modern dance. She speaks fluent English, Japanese and Russian, along with the royal and standard languages of the alien Shi'ar and Skrull.

  For a period lasting over ten years of published comics, she existed in a naturally phased state and had to choose to become solid. Whedon's run would push her control to its limit.

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• 6. Trapped in a Bullet

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  In Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men, a weapon from Breakworld looked like a missile aimed at Earth, and Kitty volunteered to stop it. She phased into the missile to disrupt its circuitry. The alien material was difficult and exhausting to pass through. After phasing for a mile she reached the center and found it empty. The weapon fired, and she passed out inside. Beast realized too late that its shape, trajectory and lack of internal circuitry meant it was a bullet.

  As it flew toward Earth, Emma Frost reached out to Kitty's unconscious mind. The two women had been wary of each other for years, and they reconciled. Emma told her she had never wanted anything like this to happen. Kitty then phased the bullet through the entire planet. It was made of super-dense alien metals and measured 10 mi (16 km) long. The effort strained her badly, and she could not phase out of it.

  Scott Summers later said that Doctor Strange, Reed Richards and some "top men" had tried to save her. They believed she had fused to the bullet. The X-Men considered her lost. Abigail Brand later confirmed Kitty was alive, but the bullet's design would harden over time and make it ever harder to crack open.

  Kitty kept herself and the bullet phased the whole time, to avoid colliding with inhabited objects in its path.

  Magneto eventually brought her home. He had come to the island of Utopia asking to join the X-Men, who remained wary of him. In a final bid for their trust, he focused his powers on the bullet and diverted it toward Earth. Unknown to the others, he had encountered it earlier while trying to regain his powers with the High Evolutionary. He had guessed Kitty was inside, but pursued his own goals first and secretly tracked the bullet.

  He cracked it in two and levitated Kitty to the ground. She was alive but stuck in intangible form and unable to speak. All of her bodily functions had halted, and the X-Men's science team could not explain how she survived. Kavita Rao suggested she had built such intense muscle memory to stay phased that she had forgotten how to become solid.

  The solution came from the Breakworlders, who followed to Earth. Kr'uun's mate killed Kitty and resurrected her in an alien ritual, and her powers returned to normal. Kitty then broke up with Colossus and went with Wolverine to Westchester to open the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning.

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• 7. Star-Lord and Leader

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  In the All-New X-Men series, Beast brought the original five X-Men into the future, and Kitty volunteered to look after them. That put her at odds with her own team, who wanted the five sent back to their own time. She left the school with the time-displaced X-Men and joined Cyclops's X-Men at the New Xavier School. When the Shi'ar Empire abducted Jean Grey, Kitty and the others teamed up with the Guardians of the Galaxy to rescue her. A long-distance, flirtatious relationship with the Guardians' Peter Quill, called Star-Lord, followed.

  The romance deepened in the Black Vortex storyline. Despite a fear of space left over from her time in the bullet, Kitty went to rescue Quill after he was captured on a date. She then persuaded him to steal a powerful artifact, the Black Vortex, from his father J'son. The assassination squad called the Slaughter Lords chased them. On the planet Spartax, Thane froze everyone in amber, and the Brood attacked, planning to use the trapped people to hatch an army.

  Kitty decided the only way to stop them was to submit to the Vortex herself. She became a being of unlimited power, phased the amber and the Brood away to another dimension, and refused to give the power up. She admitted to Quill that it frightened her. He promised never to abandon her, knelt and proposed. With tears in her eyes, she accepted.

  After the Secret Wars event she took over Quill's identity as Star-Lord, first believed to be Star-Lady, and joined the Guardians in his place so he could take on his royal duties. On a prison planet owned by the Badoon, the sight of the captives affected her personally. Her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, had been held in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, and Kitty is an Ashkenazi Jewish-American. She made it her mission to free everyone there, and she killed one of the Badoon leaders by phasing his heart out of his body.

  Back on Earth, Storm told Kitty she wanted to step down as leader of the X-Men, burdened by guilt over leading them to war. Kitty agreed to take over as long as Storm stayed on the team. She moved the mansion from Limbo to Central Park in New York. Her reasoning was that heroes need to live in the world they are trying to save. Under her leadership the school was renamed the Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach, and Rachel Summers changed her code name to Prestige.

  In the series Marauders, Kitty was known as Captain Kate Pryde and the Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company. In 2020, she was revealed to be bisexual. Claremont said he had always intended this and had considered Rachel Summers as a possible love interest, but he claimed on a 2016 podcast that he was not allowed to show it. After rejoining the X-Men in the Fall of X relaunch, she took the name Shadowkat. In the 2025 series Exceptional X-Men, she is teaching young mutants.

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• 8. Legacy and Echoes

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  Joss Whedon has called Kitty Pryde the mother of Buffy. According to a Screen Rant account, he recalled the famous issue of a teenager capable enough to take down a demon while he was creating Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He has named Kitty as the main inspiration for the Slayer.

  Critics have praised her in different ways. Nick Abadzis of Tor.com argued that her phasing was a clever metaphor for the teenage wish to simply disappear. Chris Arrant of Newsarama called her one of the best Marvel characters of all time. A dissent came from David Uzumeri of ComicsAlliance. He argued that her near-perfect morality had become her whole character, and that rarely making mistakes left her little room to grow, making her a patron saint.

  The rankings are strong. In 2011, IGN placed her third in its list of the top 25 X-Men. In 2021, Comic Book Resources ranked her first among the best characters John Byrne created, and Screen Rant ranked her first among the strongest X-Men.

  Other universes have reshaped her. In Marvel's Ultimate line, a 14-year-old Kitty idolizes Spider-Man and dates Peter Parker. In the Age of Apocalypse, she is recruited into Apocalypse's army after her parents are killed. In the story X-Men: The End, she becomes mayor of Chicago and then President of the United States.

  On screen, Sumela Kay played her in X-Men (2000) and Katie Stuart played her in X2 (2003), both in cameos. Elliot Page played her in full-length roles in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). In the second film, she can send a person's consciousness into their past self. She uses it to send Logan's mind back to 1973 to stop the creation of the Sentinels.

  In January 2018, a Kitty Pryde solo film was announced at 20th Century Fox, with Tim Miller attached as director and Brian Michael Bendis as writer. After Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox in March 2019, Fox executive Emma Watts described The New Mutants as the final film in the series, and the project ended.

  The fame of the character also reached the woman whose name Byrne borrowed. The real Kitty Pryde became overwhelmed by attention from fans. She shortened her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid being linked to the character. She has said she has mixed feelings about it. She values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.

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