A faithful friend and highly capable champion of the mutant cause, techno-savvy teenager Kitty Pryde can slide through solid matter. Her phase-shifting abilities, fighting skills and computer expertise have made her a highly valued X-Man!

Real name: Katherine "Kitty" Pryde
Occupation: Student, former adventurer
Group affiliation: X-Men (inactive); formerly Excalibur and S.H.I.E.L.D.
Base of operations: Unnamed university
First appearance: X-Men (Vol. 1) #129 (1980)

Height: 5'6"
Weight: 110 lbs.
Eyes: Hazel
Hair: Brown

Powers: A mutant, Shadowcat possesses the superhuman ability to slide through solid matter by negotiating the spaces between atoms. This effect extends to her clothing, as well as other objects or people with which she is in physical contact. While intangible, Shadowcat can walk on air, moving from a building's ground floor to its upper stories as if climbing a staircase. When she passes through an electrical system, she disrupts the device's inner workings.

Shadowcat has trained herself to become intangible automatically at the first indication of danger, but remains vulnerable to psionic or mystical attack. Also, she can phase continuously through a solid object only as long as she can hold her breath. In addition to her genetic mutation, Shadowcat's martial-arts skills and computer expertise have made her a valued member of the X-Men.

Weapons: None

History: A seemingly normal 13-year-old, Kitty Pryde began suffering headaches of steadily increasing frequency, duration and intensity as a result of her emerging mutation. Kitty's condition brought her to the attention of Professor Charles Xavier and Emma Frost, both advanced mutant telepaths. Each attempted to convince Kitty's parents that she should attend their respective school.

Neither Xavier nor Frost intended to reveal to Kitty's parents that their daughter was a mutant. Kitty herself remained unaware of her powers until the afternoon Frost arrived at her Deerfield, Illinois. While Frost was downstairs, Kitty went to her room upstairs, suffering her worst headache yet. Lying on her bed, she closed her eyes, wishing the pain would stop. It did. Kitty opened her eyes, only to find herself lying on the floor of her living room. Without knowing it, she had used her power for the first time, passing through her bed and the floor into the room below.

Kitty's parents chose the Xavier Institute rather than Frost's rival Massachusetts Academy -- actually a front for the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club, an elite social organization of the world's wealthiest and most powerful individuals. Meanwhile, Xavier had founded the X-Men -- masked, mutant adventurers standing in defense of a world on the brink of genetic war. Having distinguished herself by helping rescue a trio of X-Men abducted by Frost's operatives, Kitty soon became a member of team.

Originally taking the codename Sprite, she later adopted the alias Ariel. Kitty quickly became a valuable X-Man -- so much so that Xavier retained her as a member even after founding a second team, the New Mutants, most of whom were closer to Kitty's age.

Kitty formed an immediate bond with the weather-manipulating faux goddess known as Storm, and became especially close to the steel-skinned Russian behemoth called Colossus -- her knight in shining armor ... literally. Although their romance proved short-lived, they remained friends. When Kitty's parents filed for divorce, her new friends became a surrogate family of sorts. While the X-Men were on a deep-space mission, a small, dragon-like alien managed to stow away aboard their vessel. Kitty was the first to discover Lockheed, who quickly became attached to the teenager.

Over time, Kitty also grew close to the feral X-Man known as Wolverine, who became her mentor. While in Japan, Kitty was captured and placed under the mental thrall of Ogun, a rogue martial-arts master who had once instructed Wolverine. Logan undertook a crash course to teach Kitty to become skillful enough in the Japanese martial arts to oppose Ogun. Her training complete, Kitty assumed a new codename: Shadowcat.

When Shadowcat and the blue-skinned teleporter known as Nightcrawler believed that the other X-Men had died, they became founding members of Excalibur, Britain's premier team of superhuman adventurers. 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.