Real
name: Katherine "Kitty" Pryde
Occupation: Student, adventurer
Identity: Secret
Legal status: Citizen of the United States with
no criminal record
Former aliases: Ariel I, Sprite, Cat
Place of birth: Deerfield, Illinois
Marital status: Single
Known relatives: Carmen (father, divorced), Theresa
("Terri," mother, divorced), Samuel Prydeman (grandfather,
deceased), Chava Rosanoff (great-aunt, deceased)
Base of operations: (current) Muir Island off the
coast of Scotland, (former) Exalibur's lighthouse off
the coast of Britain, Professor Xavier's School for Gifted
Youngsters, Salem Center, Westchester County, New York;
Moira MacTaggert's Mutant Research Center, Muir Island,
Scotland
Group affiliation: (current) Excalibur, (formerly)
X-Men, S.H.I.E.L.D.
First appearance: X-MEN (first series) #129
History: Katherine "Kitty" Pryde was a thirteen-and-a-half
year old girl living in Deerfield, Illinois who led a
normal life but then began suffering headaches of steadily
increasing frequency, duration, and intensity. Unknown
to her or her parents, the headaches were a result of
her mutant power emerging.
Meanwhile, Professor Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men,
a team of mutant adventurers whom he trained in the use
of their superhuman powers, located Kitty with his device
for finding superhuman mutants, Cerebro. He and three
of the X-Men, Colossus, Storm, and Wolverine, set out
for Deerfield to contact her and possibly recruit her
as a member of the X-Men. Unknown to Xavier, the mercenary
Warhawk had planted a device that enabled his employers
in the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club to monitor Cerebro's
activities. The Inner Circle thus also learned about Kitty
Pryde, and one of its leaders, Emma Frost, the White Queen,
also went to contact her.
Xavier
trained superhuman mutants at his so-called School for
Gifted Youngsters, whereas Frost was headmistress of the
Massachusetts Academy, where she also secretly trained
young superhuman mutants such as the Hellions in the use
of their powers. Hence, Xavier and Frost would each approach
Pryde and her parents as the heads of private schools
seeking to recruit her as a talented student. Neither
Xavier nor Frost intended to reveal to Kitty's parents
that their daughter was a mutant.
Kitty herself was unaware that she was mutant or that
she had a superhuman power until the afternoon that Frost
arrived to speak to her parents. While Frost was downstairs,
Kitty went to her room upstairs, suffering her worst headache
ever. Lying on her bed, she closed her eyes, wishing the
headache would stop. It did. Kitty opened her eyes, and,
to her surprise, found herself lying on the floor of her
living room. Without knowing it, Kitty had used her "phasing"
power for the first time, and had passed through her bed
and the floor into the room below.
As Frost left, Xavier and his three X-Men arrived. The
three X-Men took Kitty to a local malt shop, where Kitty
and Storm began what evolved into a close friendship.
Suddenly three Hellfire Club mercenaries burst into the
shop and attacked the X-Men. Surprised and frightened,
Kitty moved out of the way and found herself passing through
the wall. Landing outside, she fell unconscious since
she was still not used to utilizing her power. The White
Queen used her telepathic powers to overcome the three
X-Men, whom the Hellfire Club took into their hovercraft.
But the brave Kitty had decided to snoop around the hovercraft
before it took off, and discovered the X-Men were aboard
as prisoners. Unwilling to desert her new friend Storm
or the others, she hid aboard the craft and used her new
powers to find the captive X-Men in the Frost Industries
complex to which the White Queen had taken them. Storm
gave Kitty the X-Men's phone number and asked her to summon
help. But one of the Hellfire Club mercenaries spotted
Pryde, and the White Queen ordered her capture. Using
her powers, Pryde got away long enough to phone the number.
Two
Hellfire Club mercenaries in a car were just about to
capture Pryde in Chicago when they were halted by the
Jean Grey version of Phoenix, who had just arrived with
her fellow X-Men Cyclops and Nightcrawler in response
to Kitty's message. Phoenix found and comforted the frightened
Kitty, who told her story to her and her X-Men colleagues.
Pryde then helped the X-Men and their ally, the Dazzler,
in rescuing their captive colleagues.
Phoenix used her mental powers to calm Carmen Pryde's
rage over his daughter's disappearance. Mr. and Mrs. Pryde
allowed Kitty to join Xavier's school, and soon afterwards
she became the newest member of the X-Men. She originally
took the code name Sprite, but later changed it to Ariel.
Kitty quickly became a valuable member of the X-Men, so
much so that Xavier retained her in the X-Men even after
founding a new team, the New Mutants, most of whose members
were closer to Kitty in age than the other X-Men were.
Kitty's friendship with Storm has continued, but her
best friend was Illyana Rasputin, the New Mutant called
Magik. Kitty was deeply affected by Illyana's recent death
from the Legacy Virus. Kitty had a romance with her fellow
X-Man Colossus, and although it proved to be short-lived,
they remain friends today. Kitty's constant companion
is the small, alien, dragon-like creature Lockheed, whom
she met when the X-Men were on another planet.
Over time Kitty also grew close to the X-Man Wolverine,
who became a mentor to her. While in Japan, Kitty was
captured and put under the mental control of Ogun, the
martial arts master who had once been Wolverine's teacher
but had since become his enemy. Wolverine undertook a
crash program to teach Kitty to become skillful enough
in the Japanese martial arts to contend against Ogun.
At the end of her training Kitty assumed the new code
name Shadowcat, which she still uses today.
During the massacre of the mutant Morlocks by the Marauders,
the Marauder called Harpoon injured Shadowcat with his
energy spear. It also adversely affected her powers so
that she could no longer regain her solidity. She was
cured by the combined efforts of Doctor Doom and the Fantastic
Four's Mister Fantastic.
Subsequently, Shadowcat became a founding member of the
new British-based team of adventurers Excalibur. She eventually
became romantically involved with her teammate Peter Wisdom.
Later at G. W. Bridge, the acting commander of the international
law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D., recruited Kitty Pryde
to become a temporary S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Bridge explained
that the computer system of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s flying headquarters,
the helicarrier, was failing to recognize any user but
her. Pryde soon learned that this was because the spirit
of the late Ogun had taken control of the S.H.I.E.L.D.
helicarrier's computer system. Pryde succeeded in defeating
Ogun and, with Wolverine's aid, S.H.I.E.L.D. regained
control of the helicarrier computers.
Shadowcat has subsequently returned to Excalibur, where
she has continued to be a valued member of the team. When
Excalibur disbanded, Shadowcat returned to the United
States and the X-Men. Following the tragic death of Colossus,
and too many loved ones before him, Kitty left the team
to find a new way to help realize Xavier's dream of peaceful
coexistence between man and mutant. That road led her
to a life away from the front lines of genetic conflict
at an unnamed university, where she would be free to pursue
her own destiny.
Height: 5 ft. 6 in.
Weight: 110 lbs.
Eyes: Hazel
Hair: Brown
Strength level: Shadowcat possesses the normal
human strength of a girl of her age, height, and build
who engages in moderate regular exercise.
Known superhuman powers: Shadowcat possesses the
ability to pass through solid matter 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 can temporarily merge without interacting,
and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing
through the object. This process is called "phasing."
When Shadowcat is phasing, she is, for all intents ad
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. While
phasing Shadowcat is still vulnerable to psionic or mystical
attack, however.
Shadowcat passes through objects at the same rate of
speed at which she is moving before she "enters" it. Since
she is unable to breathe while "inside" an object, she
can only continuously phase through solid objects (as
when she travels underground) as long as she can hold
her breath.
Shadowcat can phase through any material object, even
living people. When she phases through an object with
an electrical system, the process disrupts the system's
workings. She has trained herself to go automatically,
by reflex, into a phasing state at any indication of danger,
such as a loud noise like a gunshot, in order to protect
herself.
Using her phasing ability, Shadowcat can walk on air.
In fact, she can use her ability to walk on the air from
the ground to the upper stories of a building as if she
were climbing a staircase.
From the first use of her phasing power, Shadowcat has
been able to phase her clothing along with herself. Through
practice she has learned to phase other objects along
with herself without harm to them, and can now phase a
living person as big as her teammate Colossus along with
herself. She can also enable someone as big as Colossus
to "walk on air" along with her. However, she must maintain
physical contact with the person or object she phases
along herself for the effect to work with this other person
or object.
Special skills: Shadowcat possesses moderate
expertise of the martial arts of the Japanese ninja and
samurai. Shadowcat is a genius in computer science. She
has continued to take dance training under the tutelage
of Stevie Hunter, and is highly agile. Shadowcat demonstrated
great knowledge of ninja methods of combat when she was
mentally possessed by the Ronon Ogun. With the possession
over, Shadowcat has forgotten the knowledge of ninja techniques
he gave her, but she has retained the knowledge of Oriental
methods of combat taught her by Wolverine.
NOTE: Sumela Kay played her in X-Men
the movie.
