Originally Posted by
whitecrown
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.