What's In A Name--Kitty Pryde!!

You know what's always baffled me?

Kitty Pryde.

Not the character, per se, but her super-hero name. Or lack thereof. And why no sobriquet, no trademarkable name, has ever stuck.

There are others, of course. The peripatetic Luke Cage started out as "Hero For Hire," and later spent a whole issue deciding to become "Power Man" (and even fought someone later over the "rights" to the name). When I was out of comics, he apparently decided to drop the Power Man, and become just Cage, or Luke Cage. But even in his case, he actually had those names, they were used on the cover, and Marvel has preserved the trademarks by endowing them to other teams/characters.

For some reason, Marvel Girl fell out of fashion, so when she's not being Phoenix, Jean Gray's series was just called...Jean Gray.

Of course, her hypothetical daughter, Rachel, also goes through the names like Beyonce goes through costumes at a concert--Phoenix, Marvel Girl, Hound, Prestige, Revenant...but at least they keep trying.

But Kitty Pryde? 35 years later, she's still just Kitty. And they've given up.

Yeah, she more or less sort of adopted Sprite, at one point. And Ariel. (BTW, since when did Xavier let students choose their own nicknames? Does that mean Hank McCoy chose to be called the Beast?!?) And yeah, she became Shadowcat, which supposedly was more or less permanent. As if.

But Marvel's own character pages have her listed under Kitty Pryde, and their official wiki has her not as Shadowcat, but as "Pryde, Kitty." The 1985 version of The Official Handbook Of The Marvel Universe did list her under Shadowcat, for whatever that's worth...

And the "wedding of the century?" Go ahead and Google it. 99.9% of the headlines refer to the marriage of Colossus and Kitty Pryde, not "Colossus and Shadowcat," not "Piotr and Kitty." Even in a massive media event and press release, others have to use their hero names, and she stays Kitty Pryde.

You'd think that Marvel would have some interest in giving her a trademarkable name, at least. But in the only series that have her name in the title (as far as I know...I doubtless missed some), it's been Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, and Pryde and Wisdom, and Kitty Pryde Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Starlord and Kitty Pryde. Marvel seems to have zero interest in establishing her a super-hero name.

[Is it really possible Kitty Pryde has had only one solo series, that lasted 3 issues? How can that be?]

Kitty is a nice nickname--but while it works for a 13 year old, does it work for a grown woman who's headed the Xavier School and saved the world multiple times? (And yes, we all know grown people who still use diminutive nicknames...) Kitty Pryde sounds nice, rolls off the tongue, has 2 Y's...but Peter Parker is a great name, too--yet no-one suggests dumping Spider-Man.

The die was probably cast by the Kitty Pryde And Wolverine mini-series. Sure, by the end she gave herself a new name. But right there on the cover is Kitty Pryde, trademarked, with an "official" logo,  an acknowledgement that this was how fans knew her, and that this was the name that would sell the book. Other names were moot.

Maybe if they had called it Shadowcat And Wolverine...

Friday Morning Freak-Out--Jean Grey Goes Mental!!

You can take the old-fashioned portrayal of Jean's mental powers...

Or you can go full Neal Adams/Tom Palmer on telepathy!

SUPER FREAK-OUT!!!!!

From X-Men #54 & #56 (1969)

Jean Grey--Easter Bunny, Or Biscuit??

And then there was that time that Jean Grey became a swimsuit model!

"She's fresh, boss lady! Like an Easter Bunny, or an oven-hot biscuit!"

I have no idea what that even means...

OK, is that the Bunny, or the biscuit?!?

Yes, the FBI ordered the X-Men to split up and go undercover...well, because!!

So Jean is just posing as a small-town girl come to the big city for her first modelling job!!

Don't worry, Scott has his cover identity, too!

He's the hunky jealous boyfriend who also is a news reporter on a radio station!

In about a trillion years, I would never think of Scott Summers as a "Lee Marvin type." Still, if the ladies like it...

Yowza--the swinging 60s!!

From X-Men #48 (1968)

Bold Fashion Choices--What If The X-Men Had Even Crappier Uniforms?

Some What If's have the most terrifying consequences. For example...

Well, yes, bad things do happen. The Fantastic Four, Hulk and Daredevil are depowered, Thor never returns from Asgard, Iron Man goes alcoholic way earlier and dies, blah blah blah.

But the real tragic consequences of this tiny change in the timeline is that the X-Men end up in the worst damned costumes you've ever seen.

I know--given that the X-Men started with the worst costumes ever designed by Jack Kirby, and given that they've spent the subsequent decades going through bad costume set after bad costume set, you're probably saying, "Gee, snell, How bad could they possibly be?

Pretty bad.

In this reality, Xavier spent years digging himself up from the bowels of the Earth, so Magneto gathered most of the mutants together for self-protection. And either because of Magneto's terrible costume sense, or the lack of Xavier's design aesthetic, get stuff like Angel and Beast dressed thusly:

Or Colossus dressing like it's RenFair day...

And yes, that's a little soul patch he's wearing there:

The Scarlet Witch stays precisely the same, in her original bathing suit/evening gown hybrid and Quicksilver mostly does, except for these 1950s sci-fi style shoulder fins:

Jean Grey? Hey, it's still RenFair season!

Ah, but Cyclops...let's start from the rear, shall we?

The front is not any better (the color register was off on this page...the costume is the same blue as above)...

Nothing says Scott Summers like "lightning bolt pointing to my crotch!"

And then there's the helmet...

That helmet...

Now, the art in this issue was by Vince Mielcarek. So maybe he designed these costumes. Or perhaps author Kurt Busiek gets the blame.

Then again...

...the cover is by Jim Lee, and we all know what happens when we put him in charge of redesigning costumes for alternate universes...

What If? #13 is from 1990, as if we couldn't tell.

I Thought We Had Already Covered This, Marvel!

This week Marvel had one of those little freebies with previews of all their upcoming "Season One" graphic novels.

In the preview of the X-Men: Season One book, we see the following scenes from the retelling of the X-Men's first mission:


Really now? Jean Grey tossing around planes and helicopters and APCs on her first mission???

Obviously, writer Dennis Hopeless and artist Jamie McKelvie did not consult my alomst-Peabody Award-winning series, The Most Ludicrously Underwhelming Uses Of Marvel Girls Powers.

If they had checked my series, they would have seen that early Jean Grey's telekinesis was nowhere near the "throwing around heavy military craft" level.

Instead, she was much more comfortable in the "tea kettle tossing" power level...

...she was close to mastering the "holding up a magazine as part of her Danger Room training" power level...

...she was so powerful, Scott Summers thought the best way to put her through her paces was sewing...

...and of course, Jean's main usefulness during early X-Men adventures was the old reliable, "Tossing Blankets And Capes Over Villains' Heads."


Moving jeeps and fighter jets? Not so much...

The Most Ludicrously Underwhelming Uses Of Marvel Girl's Powers--Chapter 10

In the late 1960s, The X-Men had a regular back-up feature recounting "the origins of the uncanny X-Men." These stories usually took the form of a) showing how the character's powers manifested; b) showing Professor X recruiting them to the X-Men; or c) a primer on how their powers work.

Well, by X-Men #57 (1969), they'd pretty much covered all the guys, so now it was Jean Grey's turn:

Uh-oh.

Double uh-oh.

They're really, really pushing the "she's a female!!" factor here, and this is Marvel in 1969. So something tells me that this is not going to be an empowerment seminar so much as a patronization parade.

So, allow me to present the first three panels displaying how Marvel Girl uses her powers:



Sigh...cooking and housework? Seriously, guys?

In fairness, they then proceed to give us two pages showing her using her powers in a much more super-heroic fashion.

But then we get to the very end, where we learn what Jean's "normal" superpower is:

Sigh...

The Most Ludicrously Underwhelming Uses Of Marvel Girl's Powers--Chapter 9

Once you've got a winning technique...

...stick with it, Jean.

From X-Men #50 (1968)

The Most Ludicrously Underwhelming Uses Of Marvel Girl's Powers--Chapter 8

When you have Jean Grey around...

...you don't need to keep the remote for your home theater system!!

From X-Men #35 (1967)

The Most Ludicrously Underwhelming Uses of Marvel Girl's Powers--Chapter 7

The most powerful telekinetic in the universe:

Now, I've got to be fair. While using a stick to trip a perp isn't particularly overwhelming, it did get the job done: stopping the mercenary The Ogre from kidnapping Professor X while causing minimal risk to the professor's well being. So, good job, Jean.

Until the very next page:

So, while bound, and without using any mutant powers, Charles Xavier also manages to trip the dreaded Ogre.

Which means: Jean Grey is precisely as powerful as a hog-tied, powerless paraplegic.

(It also means the Ogre really is a bit of a puss, too...)

Oh, Jean...

From X-Men #28 (1967)

The Most Ludicrously Underwhelming Uses Of Marvel Girl's Powers--Chapter 6

Cal Rankin, the magnificent Mimic, has just joined the X-Men. Unfortunately, that is the exact same time that the Puppet Master decided Rankin would be the perfect dupe to use against the Fantastic Four. So he uses his scientific/magic clay to possess the Mimic and has him whoop on the X-Men as a trial run.

Of course, at this point Mimic possesses the powers of all of the X-Men, including Professor X. The Angel is out of action from a previous mission, the rest of the X-Men are down. But Jean Grey, mistress of telekinesis, one of the most powerful mutants alive, steps up to the plate:

She drops a tea kettle on his head...

Sigh...

From X-Men #27 (1966)

The Most Ludicrously Underwhelming Uses Of Marvel Girl's Powers--Chapter 5

Another day, another Danger Room sequence, as the lads run through all sorts of strenuous tests of their physicals abilities:

And powerful mutant Jean Grey? What rigorous feats does she have? How does she hone her skill for combat situations?

Sigh...

From X-Men #19 (1966)

The Most Ludicrously Underwhelming Use Of Marvel Girl's Powers--Chapter #4

While the rest of the X-Men are put through their rigorous "post-graduate" exercises in the Danger Room...

Marvel Girl is given something else to do...

Watch as Scott Summers puts her through her paces:


A new record!! Scott sure loves to time Jean...

And the final result?

You dropped a stitch, you harlot!!!!!!!!

From X-Men #8 (1964).

The Most Ludicrously Underwhelming Use Of Marvel Girl's Powers--Chapter #3

When you have a teammate as powerful as Jean Grey...

...you NEVER need ice packs!!

From X-Men #9 (1965)

The Most Ludicrously Underwhelming Use Of Marvel Girl's Powers--Chapter 2

Professor X has invented a new, nearly unstoppable robot as an "ultimate test" for the X-Men:



"Excellent, Jean! You brought the blanket to us in record time!" Which implies that she regularly snatched blankets from Xavier's lap, and Cyclops timed her.

If you consult older editions of the Guinness Book Of World Records, you will see that Jean Grey did indeed hold the unchallenged record for "Fastest Blanket Bringing" for many years.

From X-Men #22 (1966)