Katherine "Kitty" Anne Pryde was leading the normal life of an extremely gifted thirteen year old girl in Deerfield, Illinois when she began suffering increasingly intense headaches. The headaches were a result of Kitty's mutant power emerging. Kitty possesses the ability to pass through solid matter.[5]
Professor Charles Xavier located Kitty and set to recruit her for his school, and possibly as a new member of his X-Men. The Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club also learned about Kitty, and its White Queen, Emma Frost, went to invite Kitty to her Massachusetts Academy.[5]
Visiting a local malt shop with some of the X-Men, Kitty and Storm began what would evolve into a close friendship. Suddenly, three Hellfire Knights burst into the shop in an attack led by the White Queen. The X-Men were overcome and taken as prisoners. Unwilling to abandon Storm and the others, Kitty hid aboard the Hellfire Club's hovercraft and found the captive X-Men in the Frost International complex where the White Queen was holding them. Storm gave Kitty the X-Men's phone number and asked her to summon help. Phoenix, Cyclops and Nightcrawler arrived in response of the message just in time to save her from Hellfire Club mercenaries. Phoenix comforted the frightened Kitty. Pryde then helped the X-Men in rescuing their captive colleagues. Afterwards, Kitty's father was furious at Xavier for the danger he believed he had placed his daughter in. Phoenix invasively used her mental powers to calm Carmen Pryde's rage.[15]
Powers and Abilities[]
Phasing/Intangibility: Shadowcat possesses the ability to pass through solid matter and objects by passing her atoms through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing could temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat had finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing." When Shadowcat is phasing, she is, for all intents and purposes, intangible. Hence, when attacked, she can shift into a "phasing" state (even if she is not at the time passing through an object) so as to allow oncoming projectiles or energy blasts to pass through her harmlessly. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same rate of speed at which she was moving before she "entered" it. Following her serious injuries at the hands of the Marauders during the Mutant Massacre,[80] Kitty's phased state became her natural state.[81][38] She only remained solid by concentrating, and reverted to her phased state if that concentration was disrupted. After a number of years, she returned to her original tangible state.[82]
Nick Fury's intel classified her as power level 7.[83]
Her powers include:
- Selective Intangibility: Allows others to become intangible and make other objects intangible by making them pass through other massive solid objects easily such as buildings, planes, and trains.
- Partial Intangibility: Kitty can choose which parts of her body become intangible. She make one part of her intangible while leaving the rest of her body solid.
- Elemental Intangibility: Allow elemental attacks to pass harmlessly through her such as water, fire, earth, air, energy, electricity, and even lightning.
- Physical Disruption: Kitty can easily damage tangible matter by passing right through it.
- Non-Corporeal Physiology: Kitty's intangibility abilities make her practically untouchable.
- Air & Water Walking: Using her phasing/intangibility ability, Shadowcat can freely walk on both air and water. In fact, she could use her ability to walk on water and the air from the ground to the upper stories of a building as if she were climbing a staircase.
- Phasing/Intangibility Extension: From the first use of her phasing power, Shadowcat was able to phase her clothing along with herself. Through practice she learned to phase other objects along with herself without harm to them, and at one point phased an entire X-Men team. She could also enable someone as big as Colossus to "walk on air" along with her. However, she had to maintain physical contact with the people or objects she phased along with herself for the effect to work with this other person or object.
- Camouflage: Kitty can easily blend into the colors of her immediate surroundings and environments, practically making her invisible to anything seen to the naked eye.
- Shadow Camouflage: Shadowcat can also become completely invisible and unseen in shadows.
- Electronic Disruption: She could phase through any material object, even living people. When she phased through an object with an electrical system, the process disrupted the system's workings.
- Telepathic Resistance: Her thoughts were highly erratic when phased as if there was no mind to telepathically affect.
- Cloaking: Kitty can hide herself and others from any type of optical eyesight.
- Black Vortex Empowerment: After exposure to the power of the Black Vortex, Kitty's cosmic potential was unleashed, vastly improving on all of her previous abilities, now being able to phase through different planes of existence and ascend to a cosmic plane.[69]
Abilities[]
Master Martial Artist: Shadowcat possessed moderate expertise of the martial arts of the Japanese ninja and samurai. Shadowcat demonstrated great knowledge of ninja methods of combat when she was mentally possessed by the Ronin Ogun. With the possession over, Shadowcat forgot the knowledge of ninja techniques he gave her, but she retained the knowledge of Japanese martial arts, as well as street-fighting methods taught to her by Wolverine.[84] She also knows Israeli Special Forces Training.[85]
Dance Training: Kitty is trained in ballet and modern dance. She continued to take dance training under the tutelage of Stevie Hunter, and was highly agile.[1]
Genius-level Computer Expert: Shadowcat was an expert in the field of computer science, demonstrating genius-level aptitude for programming, modifying, and diagnosing almost any computer system: even those of unfamiliar human and extraterrestrial origin. She used her skills in many high-stress combat situations to great effect, and in combination with her mutant ability to disrupt electrical systems she was a formidable foe for any enemy relying on advanced technology. She was on par with her former hacking partner Cypher whose mutant gift for languages granted him superhuman skill in the same field (albeit before he was consciously aware of his powers.[86]
Multilingual: She speaks fluent Japanese,[87] Russian,[3] the royal and standard languages of the Shi'ar Empire,[88] and Skrullos.[89] She also has moderate expertise in Gaelic,[citation needed] and knows some profanities in Hebrew.[82]
Strength level[]
Normal human with moderate regular exercise.
Weaknesses[]
Mystical Vulnerability: While phasing Shadowcat was still vulnerable to mystical attacks, however magic users like Scarlet Witch or Doctor Strange cannot affect her whilst Kitty is intangible.
Phasing Limitations: Since she was unable to breathe while "inside" an object, she could only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she traveled underground) as long as she could hold her breath. Denser materials were more difficult for Kitty to phase through, sometimes causing her pain. When phasing through Adamantium it makes her sick. [90] Solidifying while in an object could cause serious injury if not death. As it is an active ability, if she can't see an attack coming, she can't phase through it, a fact that the mercenary known as Deadpool once exploited when he knocked her out (taking her by surprise) in order to provoke Wolverine into fighting him for his amusement.[citation needed]
Notes[]
- Kitty Pryde is Jewish. Cultural memories of the Holocaust made her especially sensitive to all kinds of prejudice against mutants, humans or any alien species, much more if it involves camps or imprisonment.
- Shadowcat has gone through many costumes along with other aliases. Originally joined as Kitty Pryde, she hesitated between the code-names "Phase" and "Phantom Girl", while Wolverine proposed her "Mute Girl",[11] and used to call her "Suburbia".[11][12] and adopted the code-name Sprite. Soon after she went through many masks (even roller skates) and ended up with the code name Ariel. She did not go by Shadowcat (originally) until Wolverine trained her while in Japan.
- She answered to "Kitty" over "Katherine" since she was three years old.[11]
- Kitty is slightly nearsighted.[91]
- Kitty attended Robert A. Heinlein School for Engineering and Astrophysics in Chicago on a full scholarship.[92][citation needed][93]
- Like many teenage heroes, Kitty Pryde has gradually aged since her first appearance. Since Kitty was 13 in her debut (in Uncanny X-Men #128), 12 years have passed (counting both the Claremont 2000 timeskip and Secret Wars 2015 timeskips), making Kitty 25 years old.
- According to a hologram witnessed by Wolverine, the baby named Katherine Pryde was replaced in her nursery by a Neo.[94] However, the Neo race was targeted and then completely exterminated a few years later. Seeing that Kitty was not affected by this purge, it's safe to assume the hologram was a fake.[95]
Relationships and sexuality[]
Kitty is a straight woman who, since her first appearance, has dated five men. Her preference for older men named Peter is well documented since from all her boyfriends, the name of three of them are Peter and all five are much older than her. It was later revealed that even her childhood hamster was named Peter.[64]
- Her first relationship was with Piotr "Peter" Rasputin aka Colossus, a guy she met at the Xavier School after she enrolled there. At first Piotr just saw Kitty as a little sister despite her showing her intentions to be more than that, but soon his feelings towards her evolved as well and at some point they decided to try start dating. They went to three dates (two abrutly ended after being attacked by their enemies) before Piotr was kidnapped to participate on the Secret Wars. After the Wars, Piotr broke up with her because of the feelings he had for Zsaji, an alien healer he met during the wars. Some feelings still existed but both decided it was best for them to remain as friends. After many years however, Piotr died to cure the Legacy virus. Kitty took this loss pretty hard and realized she never really got over her feelings for him. However, after rejoining the X-Men, she found out Piotr had been resurrected and soon he went back home with Kitty. Both spent a long time flirting with each other until they finally decided to try again and got back together, but two days later Kitty disappeared after being trapped in a giant bullet. After some time, she returned in a permanent intangible state. Despite this, they resumed their relationship and tried to make it work, but eventually Kitty broke up with him because she realized Piotr wasn't a person who looked forward to have a happy long life with her, and would have eventually sacrificed himself again, leaving her alone once more.[96] They both remain as friends and are in good terms nowadays, still caring a lot about each other despite not being involved together anymore.[78]
- Under an illusion implanted by Emma Frost, she and Piotr had a son named Michael. [97] There's also two alternate futures where she conceived children with Piotr. In Days of Future Past, they had two children which died under Sentinels attacks[7] (unnamed in the original story, but revealed in Secret Wars to have been a boy named Cameron and a girl named Christina[98]). In the Zombieverse, they had a son named Peter Jr. before Colossus was infected.[99] The exact time when this happened is unclear as she was still a teenager at the time Piotr was attacked and turned into a zombie.[100]
- Her second relationship was with Peter "Pete" Wisdom, a British spy she met at Muir Island while working with Excalibur on England. At first Kitty strongly disliked Wisdom but warmed up to him pretty quickly after they started working on a mission to help one of Wisdoms friends. During that mission, Kitty met all of Wisdom friends and saw how much of a good person Wisdom really was despite his general attitude, as well as seeing how great they worked together in fights. Kitty fell for him quickly after that, and Wisdom fell for her as well. However, both were really wary to start a relationship because of the long age difference between them and their past experiences with relationships. Despite all of that, they got together at the end of their mission. Wisdom joined Excalibur and soon they admitted their love for each other. They were together for some more time after that until Kitty decided to join S.H.I.E.LD. and met an agent for whom she developed some feelings. A few days after she came back, Wisdom found out about this and broke up with Kitty, despite her taking the blame and reassuring him she still loved him.[101] Both still had feelings for each other after that. Kitty eventually got over them but Wisdom seems to still have some feelings despite having moved on already. They both talk to each other nowadays but Kitty prefers to maintain just a professional approach with him.[102]
- Her third relationship was with Seth, a Neo she met during her time working with NASA in repairing the High Evolutionary space station. Not much is known about this relationship since it happened during the time skip after the High Evolutionary stole the mutants powers and then gave them back. They met at Cape Canaveral before Kitty started working on the station and dated for six months. She liked how he surfed and how intelligent he was (having argued Quantum Physics on their first date). However, after Kitty and her team finished their work on the space station, Seth betrayed her and revealed his intentions of destroying the space station and eventually the human race. Believing Kitty was a Neo and because he loved her, Seth planned to escape with her; but after Kitty refused and started fighting him, he escaped from the space station alone. Later, Kitty used the suit he prepared for her to escape as well.[44] We never saw if they ever met again before the Neo race was completely wiped out.
- Her fourth relationship was with Bobby Drake aka Iceman, a guy she met after going back to the X-Men but with whom she never talked until both left Utopia to go back to Westchester with Wolverine after the Schism. Bobby and Kitty were just acquaintances for a long time, never interacting with each other beyond greetings. However, after an attack by a Krakoa on the grounds of the Jean Grey school, Iceman started thinking about his untapped potential and how following his impulses was working to unleash that potential. While near Kitty, he felt the impulse of kissing her and did it. Kitty didn't reject the kiss but was surprised by it and decided not to inquire into it further. After being infected by a virus that gave her the appearance of a pregnant woman, Kitty got extremely scared at the prospect of becoming a mother and having to grow up fast. She saw herself reflected on Bobby, and decided to pursue a relationship with him after being cured. They both had one successful date before the Battle of the Atom started. At this time, Doop had started approaching Kitty in hopes of getting her to marry him. Bobby found out about this but dismissed as a joke. However, when he realized Doop was serious, Bobby demanded an explanation. Kitty then realized that despite all the things Bobby had told her in private, he didn't trust her judgment at all. They officially broke up in the aftermath of the Battle of the Atom.[59] They both talk to each other nowadays. Although they aren't back to their previous 'long acquaintances' approach, they prefer to maintain a 'distant co-workers' attitude.[103]
- In an alternate future, she and Bobby had a son named Carmen. He inherited both Bobby and Kitty's powers.[104]
- Her fifth relationship was with Peter Quill aka Star Lord, the leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy whom he met after the Shi'ar kidnapped one of her students (Jean Grey). Kitty was curious about the Guardians' way of life and after she officially introduced to Peter, she started feeling interested on him as well. After they eventually saved Jean from the Shi'ar, she was really grateful with Peter for helping her. Peter (who was also interested on keeping contact with her) gave her a device that worked as a holographic phone so they could talk with each other whenever they wanted. Kitty accepted and gave Quill a kiss on the cheek, revealing her intentions of pursuing something more than a friendship with him. Despite this, Kitty was still wary about the prospect of dating Quill, since it was a long distance relationship.[105] Eventually they decided to try holo-dating (having a date with the other as a hologram). But once Peter was captured in the middle of one of their dates, Kitty went to space in order to rescue him. After the rescue, Quill (who wanted something really serious with her) asked Kitty to leave Earth and start living with him on space. Kitty, felt that was a big step, but after seeing the stuff that Quill actually did on space, she changed her mind and decided to stay in space with him. After a near death experience during the war against J'son for the Black Vortex, both Kitty and Quill admitted their love for each other, and after the crisis of the Black Vortex passed, Quill proposed marriage to her while floating in space (thanks to Kitty's new cosmic powers). She accepted with tears on her eyes and they had a dance to seal the deal.[64] They remained together for eight months following Peter's decision to become King of Spartax. After the universe was reformed, Quill started paying less and less attention to her due to his obligations as King. This made Kitty really angry and after ruining his inaugural speech, Kitty left him. They spent the next eight months separated until Quill was ousted from his Empire and returned to the Guardians. After some more fights and escaping the Collector's base, they finally talked about it and decided to try again, this time at a slower pace.[74] However, during the second Civil War, Kitty started to feel distant again and left Peter like the rest of the Guardians in the aftermath.[77]Although no reason was given, she decided their relationship was officially over after this.[79]
Kitty also has developed feelings for plenty of other men as well. However, nothing ever happened with these ones despite her desires and feelings.
- The first guy she ever fell in love with was a boy in school. She used to follow her around all the time, but she eventually gave up on him after she found out he had anti-Semitic ideas.[106]
- She developed feelings for Douglas "Doug" Ramsey aka Cypher, a guy she met some time after she joined the X-Men. Seeing that they had the same interests and they were the same age, Kitty started developing feelings for Doug while she was dating Colossus and this gave her some internal conflict at the time. Emma Frost confirmed her feelings for Doug after she captured them both.[107] However, nothing happened between them even after Colossus broke up with her. Doug eventually died and Kitty mourned him for a very long time. After a long time he came back from the dead, now they remain as friends.
- She also started developing feelings for a guy she met at a party named Larry Bodine. Larry was a mutant who was afraid of showing his abilities. Kitty liked him but changed her mind after Larry made some anti-mutant jokes in front of her and the New Mutants. This reject and the extreme bullying from some guys at his school led him to commit suicide. Eventually, Kitty found out Larry was just trying to fit in after being taught that Mutants are supposed to be bad, and gave an eulogy at his funeral.[108]
- She had a crush on Alistaire Stuart, a British guy who worked on the W.H.O. The crush, however, was completely one sided as it was revealed Alistaire was completely infatuated by Rachel. Kitty tried everything to attract Alistaire's attention but it proved to be futile. She spent a long time being angry about this but eventually got over him. They still remain as friends.[109]
- She developed strong feelings towards a boy named Alasdhair Kinross, the son of a Lord who lived in old England. After being sent to the past by Rachel's power, Kitty met Alasdhair and instantly felt infatuation towards him.[82] They had a little adventure to rescue Rachel from Nazis. After Alasdhair showed his complete trust towards her, and wasn't even bothered by her mutant powers, Kitty fell completely in love with him and Alasdhair reciprocated her feelings with the same force. However, she understood the need to come back to her own time and begrudgingly said goodbye after agreeing to become his fiancée. Alasdhair was already dead on the present so they never had the chance to reunite. She recieved the Kinross Crown as a reminder of him.[110]
- She developed feelings for Rigby Fallon, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent that was her own age. Her feelings for him developed fast as she saw how intelligent he was while them being the same age. She had the desire to kiss him and they almost did but were interrupted by oter S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.[111] However, the idea of having some desire to kiss Rigby was enough to made her feel guilty as she was dating Pete Wisdom at the time. They never met again after Kitty left S.H.I.E.L.D.
- Doop revealed he had feelings for her and was a big part on destroying Kitty's relationship with Iceman as a result. Kitty was disgusted by the idea at first but eventually grew to like him, gave him a lip kiss, and even agreed to stay with him on the Doopland. Doop was happy but let her go telling her what she really wanted is to avoid making the decision of leaving the Jean Grey School.[112] They were never shown talking again after this.
- She has also showed attraction towards Thor,[113] Johnny Storm,[114], James Madrox,[115], and Longshot.[116]
There was also some occasions when Kitty was forced into an engagement.
- She was engaged to the mutant Caliban from the Morlocks. After the X-Men went down to the Morlock Tunnels to rescue Angel, Plague infected Kitty with some kind of a virus. Caliban took care of her but she was worried about the X-Men so she made a deal with him. If he rescued the X-Men, Kitty would stay with him. The X-Men were saved but Kitty left the tunnels without fulfilling her promise. Eventually the Morlocks came back to made her honor her deal as revenge. Kitty agreed to honor the deal with the condition that they helped her to save Colossus (who was severely injured in combat). Kitty was ready to marry Caliban but he released her from her vow as he wanted Kitty to love him for real instead of forcing her to do it. Kitty thanked him and Caliban gave her a rose. They decided to stay as friends after that.[117]
- She was engaged to Prince William from Earth-1193. This happened while she was traveling through alternate dimensions with Excalibur.[118] Kitty refused Prince William offer but the Queen Mother used her magic to transform her into a princess of that realm hoping the Kitty of that realm would confront her and prove her worthiness. The spell wore off and eventually 1193-Kitty confronted her and won the love of Prince William as it was meant to be.
