Colossus
Piotr Nikolaievitch Rasputin
Biography
Marvel introduced her as a thirteen-year-old from Deerfield, Illinois, so readers would have someone to stand behind. She turned into the franchise's heart instead. Kitty phases: she desolidifies and walks through walls, floors, bullets and people, takes passengers with her, and leaves machinery dead behind her. She trained with ninjas, beat a possessing sorcerer named Ogun out of her own head, ran a British team, adopted an alien dragon, and cycled through Sprite, Ariel and Shadowcat before deciding what to be called. Every generation of X-Men writers has used Kitty as the measure of whether the team still deserves the name.
Her greatest hits are all sacrifices and small brave things. In Days of Future Past it is the adult Kate Pryde who throws her mind back through time to stop a massacre. “Kitty's Fairy Tale” is a bedtime story she spins for Illyana that became one of Claremont's most beloved single issues, and when the Brood came hunting she was the one who kept her head. In Astonishing X-Men she phased a planet-killing bullet through the Earth, could not solidify afterwards, and drifted in space until Magneto hauled her home. Then Krakoa's gates rejected her, so Captain Kate Pryde took a ship instead.
Vital statistics
- Real name
- Katherine Anne Pryde
- Also known as
- Sprite, Ariel, Shadowcat, Star-Lord (briefly), Captain Kate Pryde
- Species
- Mutant
- Place of origin
- Deerfield, Illinois
- First appearance
- Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980)
- Created by
- Chris Claremont, John Byrne
- Affiliations
- X-Men, Excalibur, Guardians of the Galaxy, Marauders
Power grid
Intelligence4
Strength2
Speed2
Durability2
Energy2
Fighting4
Rated 1–7 on the classic Marvel power-grid scale.
Powers
- Intangibility
She phases her atoms through solid matter, so walls, blades and bullets pass through her harmlessly.
- Passenger Phasing
She extends the effect to people, objects and even vehicles she is touching.
- Disruptive Touch
Phasing through machinery shorts out its circuitry, which makes her the answer to Sentinels and armour.
- Air-Walking
While intangible she treats the ground beneath her as solid enough to climb, effectively walking on nothing.
- Phase-Through Shock
Passing her intangible body through a living target leaves them stunned and disoriented.
Abilities
- Expert computer programmer and hacker
- Ninja training in the Japanese martial arts
- Fluent Japanese and Russian
- Trained dancer
- Starship captain and field leader
Weaknesses
- Solidifying while inside solid matter would kill her
- Certain energies and psionic attacks bypass her phasing
- Magnetic force can disrupt her intangibility
- Could not pass through Krakoa's gates at all
Comics history
Kitty Pryde is the X-Men's most influential supporting character turned lead. Claremont and Byrne created her as a point of entry and then wrote her better than almost anyone else on the roster, giving her Days of Future Past, the Ogun arc in Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, and a decade in Excalibur with Alan Davis. Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men made her the emotional spine of the biggest X-book of the 2000s and then fired her into space. Gerry Duggan's Marauders crowned her Captain Kate Pryde, and Krakoa's one locked door belonged to her alone.
Allies
- Lockheed
- Colossus
- Nightcrawler
- Wolverine
- Storm
Enemies
- Ogun
- Sebastian Shaw
- Emma Frost
- Mister Sinister
- the Brood
Weapons & equipment
- Katana
- The Marauder
Trivia
- She was thirteen when she joined, Claremont's deliberate audience surrogate, and she burned through three codenames before Shadowcat stuck.
- Lockheed is not a pet. He is a fully sapient alien warrior of the Flock who chose to follow her, and he has been quietly smarter than most of the team all along.
- Kitty was briefly Star-Lord, taking Peter Quill's name and jacket during a run with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the two of them were engaged.
- Sebastian Shaw murdered her during the Krakoa era, and she came back through resurrection protocols to make his life considerably worse.
Famous quotes
I am not a girl who needs saving. I am the girl who walks through the wall you are hiding behind.
You cannot hit what is not there. Ask anyone who has tried.
Timeline
- 1980
Debuts at thirteen in Uncanny X-Men #129 and becomes the reader's way into the X-Men.
- 1981
Days of Future Past casts her adult self, Kate, as the time traveller sent back to stop the Sentinel future.
- 2008
Phases a planet-killing bullet through the Earth in Astonishing X-Men and is lost in space inside it.
- 2019–2021
Captains the Marauder as Captain Kate Pryde, is murdered by Sebastian Shaw, and returns through Krakoan resurrection.
Gallery
Poster art is generated from each character’s signature palette. Drop official art into assets/images/ and set the img field to swap it in.
Related characters
Frequently asked
How do Kitty Pryde's powers work?
She phases her body's atoms through the gaps in solid matter, so walls, bullets and people pass through her without contact. She can carry passengers and objects with her, walk on air while intangible, and short out any machine she passes through. Solidifying while still inside something solid would kill her, which is the built-in limit.
Why couldn't Kitty Pryde use the Krakoan gates?
The gates read mutant biology to admit passengers, and they rejected Kate every single time for reasons Krakoa never satisfactorily explained. It became the era's most pointed mystery, since it implied something about her mutation or her identity that the island itself could not classify. She answered it by taking to the sea as Captain Kate Pryde and smuggling mutants out by ship.
Did Kitty Pryde and Colossus ever get married?
They came very close. The two of them planned a wedding in X-Men Gold, and Kitty called it off at the altar because she could not go through with it; Rogue and Gambit used the ceremony instead. The relationship has restarted and collapsed several times across four decades.