Your Unpopular/Controversial Opinions on the X-Universe

[Sisterhood Of Mutants]

I'm not overly fond of Kitty. When I started reading the X-books in the 90's, she was on Excalibur, which I didn't read. The first time I read something really featuring her was Whedon's Astonishing, where she was treated like a very big deal, and I remember not getting it at all. Skip ahead a few years to post-Schism, and it's the same thing. She co-ran the Jean Grey school with Logan and was one of the core characters who everybody respected and never questioned. Same thing when Bendis took over in his books (All-New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy). And it's continued like this over the years throughout different writers and editors.

I don't hate her or anything, it's just weird to see all these writers absolutely love her and act like she's the beating heart of the X-franchise, when I don't see that at all. To me, she's mostly come off as judgemental and full of herself over the years I've been reading her.

I couldn't stand comic-Kitty up until Astonishing. Everything before was everything you said - "she mostly comes off as judgmental and full of herself" - preach. She's a character used to show how empathetic other people are, like Storm and Wolverine, but she lacks empathy. I think she earned her fighting chops, but I don't think the canon respect of leadership she is given by teammates and other X-Men was earned or deserved at all. And I think a lot more characters have reason to resent her than they are willing to allow, for some reason.

Still a cool ability though. Simple yet effective.

So happy to have found my people. The actual embodiment of the Arrested Development “…….her?” gif as a fictional character tbh.

“Cool powers, but— wait? Why is everyone genuflecting?”

Like… don’t get me wrong, the problem definitely started with her creators. But by the mid-‘90s (or whenever Ellis hopped onboard), grown men who still wanted to date this fictional teenage girl were first put in charge, and there’s been a revolving door of them ever since.

(She had minimal screentime in the Fox movies, yet this was becoming an issue even there before the merger. She was primed to get a solo movie before Storm, for God’s sake.)

What annoys me most is the whole Chosen One role always given to her (Whedon reference intended). I groaned at the “Krakoa’s gates won’t open for me!” bit because I knew it was going to lead to another version of that. The funniest part is the eternal “but wait she’s actually the most underestimated leader/fighter/teacher/hacker/ninja/pirate/dancer/bartender/future president of the United States!!!” narrative, which feels more aimed at readers themselves for not fanboying over her the way her writers want them to, since the protagonists sharing her stories are never allowed to actually feel that way about her.

(Which is what the constant code name and nickname and costume changes feel like an extension of: “But do you like her the most now?” It always feels disingenuous and tryhard, which is super off-putting.)

Up to and including outgoing editorial repeatedly giving her stealth solos and shoving her front and center (and putting her on the Quiet Council?!… lol). Other A-listers died (or went into magical comas) during Krakoa, and it’s simply ignored by everyone for months, or not even acknowledged by their families, if not treated as mere inconvenience. Kitty “dies”… and everyone shows up for her Viking funeral before all the side characters from her stealth solo run off to ~avenge her.

Still kinda dying to know why she’s leading yet another team if Brevoort allegedly dislikes her so much. Push from Cebulski? (Aka the Asian superstar creative behind her Shadow & Flame solo!) Push from Feige? (Kidding. But also… he’s apparently an OG Excalibur fan…) Was this originally the premise for JDW’s/Duggan’s New X-Men announced aged ago and Marvel didn’t want to waste months of work despite the office changing faces? Or is the new editor just mature enough to not sideline characters he personally dislikes if a writer is interested in them? (That would be refreshing tbh.)

The sad part is, a geeky sapphic-coded fashion disaster with an inventive power set and close ties to most of my favs? On paper, she should be one of my favorites.

But maybe Eve Ewing will finally spin straw into gold. Who knows.

[marhawkman]

That's true. Storytelling always requires arche- and stereotypes to some degree. Familarity tends to make things easier and comfortable for the audience. Even trying to be different or subvertive usualy require an established baseline to be compared to.

The question then becomes what role/arche-/stereotype suits a character the best? Especially when said character was allready established in a different story/medium.

yeah the old "evil Superman" trope... needs you to define what Superman is first.

[Android 17]

- I get that everyone loves the Krakoa era, I dig the concept and some of the new costumes we got out of it, but I don't like that they made most of the mutants between the X-Men and the Brotherhood all kumbaya with each other. There should be a division and not so much blurred lines.

- There aren't too many mutants (because too much is never enough), but I feel like there are too many X-Men.

- Never got the hype either about Kitty Pryde, I'd much rather prefer Jubilee.

- X-Men 97 is by far the best adaptation of the merry mutants, and I'm including the live action movies in this.

[Refrax5]

It is weird to have a book with evolution as a central theme, be one in which the cast is never allowed to evolve. (Either as characters, always being reset back to factory settings, or as a culture, or as a species, in the passing on of their genes, values, legacies, etc.)

The problem is that whenever anyone tries to introduce a new generation of mutants, they don't really seem to catch on. You get the occasional new character that works, but you're never gonna get a passing of the torch because nobody cares about the new generation.

I also think legacy characters are, with rare exception, kind of lame. It's just trading off another character's name and gimmick and creating a kind of lineage of derivative, nepo-baby superheroes. I don't feel like having the characters be something like Wolverine VIII or Nightcrawler Jr or whatever is especially interesting either.

[anyajenkins]

To be fair, the books themselves have terrible grasp on evolution to begin with, lol…

[ARkadelphia]

- I get that everyone loves the Krakoa era, I dig the concept and some of the new costumes we got out of it, but I don't like that they made most of the mutants between the X-Men and the Brotherhood all kumbaya with each other. There should be a division and not so much blurred lines.

- There aren't too many mutants (because too much is never enough), but I feel like there are too many X-Men.

- Never got the hype either about Kitty Pryde, I'd much rather prefer Jubilee.

- X-Men 97 is by far the best adaptation of the merry mutants, and I'm including the live action movies in this.

Art thou high?

[whitecrown]

I'm not overly fond of Kitty. When I started reading the X-books in the 90's, she was on Excalibur, which I didn't read. The first time I read something really featuring her was Whedon's Astonishing, where she was treated like a very big deal, and I remember not getting it at all. Skip ahead a few years to post-Schism, and it's the same thing. She co-ran the Jean Grey school with Logan and was one of the core characters who everybody respected and never questioned. Same thing when Bendis took over in his books (All-New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy). And it's continued like this over the years throughout different writers and editors.

I don't hate her or anything, it's just weird to see all these writers absolutely love her and act like she's the beating heart of the X-franchise, when I don't see that at all. To me, she's mostly come off as judgemental and full of herself over the years I've been reading her.

Same. I have no nostalgia for her. As a Jean fan, I would read the X-Men eras where Jean was alive and kicking so my nostalgia is for the O5, All-New All-Different X-Men, X-Factor, Outback X-Men, and the 90s Blue/Gold Teams. Kitty wasn't present in those eras and I only read a scattering of issues when she was on the team but usually the focus was on somebody else like Rachel or Rogue. Because of TAS and movies, I saw either Jubilee or Rogue as Wolverine's teen female sidekick. Kitty was just the interloper who came around to cause friction in Rogue's life since they had no other subplot for Rogue by X3.
This fascination with her seems to be mostly from comic book readers who grew up with her in the 80s and saw her as their imaginary girlfriend. I also don't think it's a coincidence that so much of her fanbase is male-oriented. When you compare her to Jean, Storm, Rogue, or Betsy, I've noticed that while they have their share of straight male fans, their fandoms tend to feature more women and gay men. They feel more like balanced characters compared to Kitty who feels like an author's write-in character.

Ironically enough, the Kitty I like the most is the X-Men Evolution version who shares very little in common with the comic book Kitty.

Another issue I have with Kitty is sorta what John Byrne alluded to, the fact that she's supposed to be a normal teenage girl but she's anything but. I don't mind her being a girl genius like Byrne had a problem with but at some point she gets a little too hard to be relatable to when she's also Wolverine's teen sidekick and his natural successor, a masterclass ninja, swashbuckling pirate, has a pet alien dragon, is best friends/roomies with a demon sorceress, soulmates with the Phoenix child, the successor to Saturnyne and the next Omniversal Majestrix, Franklin Richards' babysitter, Reed Richards' lab assistant, an agent of SHIELD, headmistress of a school, president of the US, a viable romantic interest for all the age-inappropriate men around her and also all the Claremontian women, and on top of all that, she'll be alive to see the end of the universe with Wolverine and Jean so she's effectively immortal.
Claremont especially seemed way too obsessed with her in his later runs at the detriment of other characters, namely Rogue. Like how in X-Men Forever, he wanted to establish Kitty, Remy, and 'Ro as a family of their own. And how in X-Treme X-Men, CC had Wolverine bark at Rogue about how she wasn't fit to use his real name like Kitty could. And suddenly Kitty views Betsy as an older sister in X-Men Forever, when they barely had any contact with each other in the 90s. And Sabretooth views her as family because she was "Wolverine's daughter" or as close to it as she could get. And that's not even getting into CC's retcon Excalibur story about how Kitty and Rachel time-traveled back and met Wolverine so he actually told Xavier to find her in TDPS because he already knew her and that she'd be important.

[NK1988]

Same. I have no nostalgia for her. As a Jean fan, I would read the X-Men eras where Jean was alive and kicking so my nostalgia is for the O5, All-New All-Different X-Men, X-Factor, Outback X-Men, and the 90s Blue/Gold Teams. Kitty wasn't present in those eras and I only read a scattering of issues when she was on the team but usually the focus was on somebody else like Rachel or Rogue. Because of TAS and movies, I saw either Jubilee or Rogue as Wolverine's teen female sidekick. Kitty was just the interloper who came around to cause friction in Rogue's life since they had no other subplot for Rogue by X3.
This fascination with her seems to be mostly from comic book readers who grew up with her in the 80s and saw her as their imaginary girlfriend. I also don't think it's a coincidence that so much of her fanbase is male-oriented. When you compare her to Jean, Storm, Rogue, or Betsy, I've noticed that while they have their share of straight male fans, their fandoms tend to feature more women and gay men. They feel more like balanced characters compared to Kitty who feels like an author's write-in character.

Ironically enough, the Kitty I like the most is the X-Men Evolution version who shares very little in common with the comic book Kitty.

Another issue I have with Kitty is sorta what John Byrne alluded to, the fact that she's supposed to be a normal teenage girl but she's anything but. I don't mind her being a girl genius like Byrne had a problem with but at some point she gets a little too hard to be relatable to when she's also Wolverine's teen sidekick and his natural successor, a masterclass ninja, swashbuckling pirate, has a pet alien dragon, is best friends/roomies with a demon sorceress, soulmates with the Phoenix child, the successor to Saturnyne and the next Omniversal Majestrix, Franklin Richards' babysitter, Reed Richards' lab assistant, an agent of SHIELD, headmistress of a school, president of the US, a viable romantic interest for all the age-inappropriate men around her and also all the Claremontian women, and on top of all that, she'll be alive to see the end of the universe with Wolverine and Jean so she's effectively immortal.
Claremont especially seemed way too obsessed with her in his later runs at the detriment of other characters, namely Rogue. Like how in X-Men Forever, he wanted to establish Kitty, Remy, and 'Ro as a family of their own. And how in X-Treme X-Men, CC had Wolverine bark at Rogue about how she wasn't fit to use his real name like Kitty could. And suddenly Kitty views Betsy as an older sister in X-Men Forever, when they barely had any contact with each other in the 90s. And Sabretooth views her as family because she was "Wolverine's daughter" or as close to it as she could get. And that's not even getting into CC's retcon Excalibur story about how Kitty and Rachel time-traveled back and met Wolverine so he actually told Xavier to find her in TDPS because he already knew her and that she'd be important.

I mean, Evo Kitty is probably not like Comic Kitty because one is meant to aapeal to kids in the early 2000s and the other from the 80s. Different times. Like how Jubilee is constantly on rollerblades in the 90s.

I do adore Evo Kitty, though. It's hard to tell definitively with such things but I'm pretty sure Rogue and Kitty ae the most popular Evolution characters.

[whitecrown]

I mean, Evo Kitty is probably not like Comic Kitty because one is meant to aapeal to kids in the early 2000s and the other from the 80s. Different times. Like how Jubilee is constantly on rollerblades in the 90s.

I do adore Evo Kitty, though. It's hard to tell definitively with such things but I'm pretty sure Rogue and Kitty ae the most popular Evolution characters.

I think Kurt is also very popular from Evolution alongside Rogue and Kitty.

There are always differences in adaptations, especially from different eras, but most of the characters still feel more or less like their comic counterparts, give or take a few changes. Kitty comes across like the most altered between her relationship with Lance and her ditzy, valley girl accent. I don't remember if she was a computer genius but I don't think she was. But like I said, I enjoyed this Kitty, probably because I was a 2000s child so I could relate to her and there wasn't any drama about becoming a brainwashed ninja or getting pet alien. Also Kurt was my other favorite and Kitty and Kurt more or less were a duo in Evolution. Kurt was also a fresh breath of air since I felt the movies made him too solemn and focused too much on religion while ignoring his fun-loving, swashbuckling ways.

I know Goth Rogue is very popular but I never warmed up to her. Which is odd because I even liked the movie Rogue (my intro to the character before the comics and shows) but Goth Rogue got on my nerves. And to think Morrison wanted to kill off Rogue and bring her back based on the X-Men Evolution version. I have always felt that man was a hack.

[Frobisher]

Whenever I see someone really dunking on a a character I really want to see how uncritically they talk about their favourites in the appreciation threads lol

[whitecrown]

So happy to have found my people. The actual embodiment of the Arrested Development “…….her?” gif as a fictional character tbh.

“Cool powers, but— wait? Why is everyone genuflecting?”

Like… don’t get me wrong, the problem definitely started with her creators. But by the mid-‘90s (or whenever Ellis hopped onboard), grown men who still wanted to date this fictional teenage girl were first put in charge, and there’s been a revolving door of them ever since.

(She had minimal screentime in the Fox movies, yet this was becoming an issue even there before the merger. She was primed to get a solo movie before Storm, for God’s sake.)

What annoys me most is the whole Chosen One role always given to her (Whedon reference intended). I groaned at the “Krakoa’s gates won’t open for me!” bit because I knew it was going to lead to another version of that. The funniest part is the eternal “but wait she’s actually the most underestimated leader/fighter/teacher/hacker/ninja/pirate/dancer/bartender/future president of the United States!!!” narrative, which feels more aimed at readers themselves for not fanboying over her the way her writers want them to, since the protagonists sharing her stories are never allowed to actually feel that way about her.

(Which is what the constant code name and nickname and costume changes feel like an extension of: “But do you like her the most now?” It always feels disingenuous and tryhard, which is super off-putting.)

Up to and including outgoing editorial repeatedly giving her stealth solos and shoving her front and center (and putting her on the Quiet Council?!… lol). Other A-listers died (or went into magical comas) during Krakoa, and it’s simply ignored by everyone for months, or not even acknowledged by their families, if not treated as mere inconvenience. Kitty “dies”… and everyone shows up for her Viking funeral before all the side characters from her stealth solo run off to ~avenge her.

Still kinda dying to know why she’s leading yet another team if Brevoort allegedly dislikes her so much. Push from Cebulski? (Aka the Asian superstar creative behind her Shadow & Flame solo!) Push from Feige? (Kidding. But also… he’s apparently an OG Excalibur fan…) Was this originally the premise for JDW’s/Duggan’s New X-Men announced aged ago and Marvel didn’t want to waste months of work despite the office changing faces? Or is the new editor just mature enough to not sideline characters he personally dislikes if a writer is interested in them? (That would be refreshing tbh.)

The sad part is, a geeky sapphic-coded fashion disaster with an inventive power set and close ties to most of my favs? On paper, she should be one of my favorites.

But maybe Eve Ewing will finally spin straw into gold. Who knows.

We've discussed this before but all your points remain super solid.

You can definitely sense the shift when the people who grew up with her were now of age to write her and plant themselves into the story as her boyfriend. I still remember how you informed me that the only reason Marvel was willing to let Rogue marry Gambit was because it was considered the lesser evil over Kitty marrying anyone. She's that sacrosanct to Marvel editorial that they nixed her wedding plans and were willing to "sacrifice" Rogue because they can't stand a taken Kitty, little realizing they were only giving Rogue fans what they wanted.

I think if someone played a drinking game based on how many different occupations, roles, and futures Claremont and Marvel planned for Kitty, they'd be dead before they got through a third of the list.

And I still wonder where Marvel/Fox got the idea that a Kitty solo movie would sell before a Storm origin film would. The same Kitty whose only role in the movies was to steal Rogue's boyfriend? A boyfriend most fans would have been happy for Rogue to dump?

The codename thing was weird to me too. I know Ariel was supposed to be her original codename which fit her powers since Ariel is a ghost from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Somehow that got changed into Sprite at the last minute and Kitty thinks the Ariel codename is yuck. Then randomly she's going by the Ariel codename with no fanfare or explanation as to why this name she despised is now mature enough for her to use. And then Shadowcat comes just because she was a brainwashed ninja even though it doesn't fit her powers at all but even that will get randomly dropped at some point.

[From The Shadows]

A lot of Kitty dislike in here. I find Kitty more relatable then most Claremont ( Dont get my wrong my favorite female of that type is Betsy). She isn't one. she isn't the most powerful, or the most beautiful and she's really a geek put in extradentary situations. I will admit to CC having way too many ideas but that can be said about some other characters.

This is probably the more unpopular opinion here at least, but as a Kitty fan I did not like "Valley Girl" Kitty that much. Many old comics fans didn't. And it caused a bit of a stir in comics forums back then. I might as well mention Nightcrawler too. I also did not like their version of Kurt too much. I mean, he would have been fine as an OC but he just wasn't anywhere close to being Kurt. But since Evo was so popular I can see me being overruled. I admit the show was good quality, but I'll always prefer the comics versions.

[whitecrown]

This is probably the more unpopular opinion here at least, but as a Kitty fan I did not like "Valley Girl" Kitty that much. Many old comics fans didn't. And it caused a bit of a stir in comics forums back then. I might as well mention Nightcrawler too. I also did not like their version of Kurt too much. I mean, he would have been fine as an OC but he just wasn't anywhere close to being Kurt. But since Evo was so popular I can see me being overruled.

What was different about Evolution Kurt vs comic Kurt? I always felt he was one of the better portrayals of the X-Men characters, accounting for being aged down into an American teenager.

[From The Shadows]

What was different about Evolution Kurt vs comic Kurt? I always felt he was one of the better portrayals of the X-Men characters, accounting for being aged down into an American teenager.

Uh... A lot. To most Kurt fans.

ETA: WatX was the best portrayal.

[whitecrown]

Uh... A lot. To most Kurt fans.

ETA: WatX was the best portrayal.

I liked him there as well in the episode or two that highlighted him. I never liked WATXM, but Kurt was one of the only highlights for me. In contrast, I can't remember anything about Kitty except her crushing on Bobby. And they didn't seem to know what to do with Rogue besides trying to copy her dynamic with Wolverine from the movies but making it even less compelling.