10 Comic Book Characters You Wish You Could Be

6. Kitty Pryde

It’s a rare thing for a super hero character to become so beloved that they’re more famous under their given name than the pseudonym they chose when they put on the spandex. The Marvel X-Man Kitty Pryde, formerly known as Sprite or Ariel and still occasionally as Shadowcat, is one of those characters.

Introduced in 1980 through an editorial insistence that Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters should really have some actual gifted youngsters running around, Kitty struck a chord with a whole host of teenaged readers, who saw something of themselves in the sparky computer geek. Also, her best friend was a tiny alien dragon. Yeah, you read that right.

Her piercing wit and intelligence were often highlighted in the Uncanny X-Men comic book, as were her Jewish roots, writer Chris Claremont being intent on fleshing out the characters he worked with beyond a few catchphrases and a colourful union suit. But over the years, Kitty has grown from a thirteen year old newbie, gauche and inexperienced, to Wolverine’s sidekick, a ninja asskicker and full-fledged heroine. And Kitty’s fans have grown up with her: none more so than Avengers guru Joss Whedon, who readily admits that there’s a whole lot of Kitty Pryde in Buffy Summers, and that getting to write Ms. Pryde was the main reason that he took on Astonishing X-Men back in 2006.

Fundamentally, if you were a female comics geek in the last twenty years of the twentieth century, you were probably a Kitty Pryde fangirl, and you probably still are. And you still want a dragon as your best friend.