Publication History
Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde that he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne had drawn the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver. The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in the issues #141-142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, who time travels into the past to prevent the mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984–1985), written by Claremont, was a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman and adopts the new name "Shadowcat".
Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans after the publication of the X-Men comics that she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated that she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying that she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes that more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.
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