6. The Real-Life Kitty Pryde Had To Change Her Name
No, not the totally awesome rapper (who has dropped the "Pryde" from her stage name, probably due to legal reasons), but the real-life peer of artist John Byrne. Byrne, who co-created Shadowcat along with writer Chris Claremont during the pair's classic X-Men run, supposedly named the character after the real-life Kitty Pryde with whom he had attended Alberta College of Art in the early seventies. Byrne had simply meant it as a fun little shout out to a pal; for Pryde, it became more of a nuisance. Or a massive inconvenience. As the character grew in popularity, apparently so did the examples of Pryde being hassled by fans who wanted to get in contact with the namesake of their favourite phasing X-person. In the nineties Kitty made the executive decision to start going by the professional title of KD Pryde to try and regain some of the anonymity she had lost since becoming a comic book sensation. It wasn't all bad, though. As the story goes, when she began to gain notoriety, the real-life Kitty received a friendlier piece of fan mail from Byrne himself: the original sketches he made for the character, along with a signed copy of her first comic book appearance, along with the note "To Kitty, the real one. Thanks for the use of the name."
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
