Personality: Kitty Pryde is a caring and enthusiastic young woman. Despite the tragedies she's experienced as one of the X-Men, her spirits remain high. She has a close relationship with her pet and guardian, the alien dragon Lockheed.

Strength: Shadowcat possesses the normal human strength of a girl of her age, height, and build who engages in moderate regular exercise.

Fighting Skills: Shadowcat demonstrated great knowledge of ninja methods of combat when she was mentally possessed by the Ronon Ogun. With the possession over, Shadowcat has forgotten the knowledge of ninja techniques he gave her, but she has retained the knowledge of Oriental methods of combat taught her by Wolverine.

Special Skills and Abilities:Shadowcat is a genius in computer science. She is a talented writer, and is highly agile.

Known superhuman powers: Shadowcat possesses the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atoms through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing." When Shadowcat is phasing, she is, for all intents ad purposes, intangible. Hence, when attacked, she can shift into a "phasing" state (even if she is not at the time passing through an object) so as to allow oncoming projectiles or energy blasts to pass through her harmlessly. While phasing Shadowcat is still vulnerable to psionic or mystical attack, however.

Shadowcat passes through objects at the same rate of speed at which she is moving before she "enters" it. Since she is unable to breathe while "inside" an object, she can only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her breath.

Shadowcat can phase through any material object, even living people. When she phases through an object with an electrical system, the process disrupts the system's workings. She has trained herself to go automatically, by reflex, into a phasing state at any indication of danger, such as a loud noise like a gunshot, in order to protect herself.

Using her phasing ability, Shadowcat can walk on air. In fact, she can use her ability to walk on the air from the ground to the upper stories of a building as if she were climbing a staircase.

From the first use of her phasing power, Shadowcat has been able to phase her clothing along with herself. Through practice she has learned to phase other objects along with herself without harm to them, and can now phase a living person as big as her teammate Colossus along with herself. She can also enable someone as big as Colossus to "walk on air" along with her. However, she must maintain physical contact with the person or object she phases along herself for the effect to work with this other person or object.

Meanwhile, Professor Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men, a team of mutant adventurers whom he trained in the use of their superhuman powers, located Kitty with his device for finding superhuman mutants, Cerebro. He and three of the X-Men, Colossus, Storm, and Wolverine, set out for Deerfield to contact her and possibly recruit her as a member of the X-Men. Unknown to Xavier, the mercenary Warhawk had planted a device that enabled his employers in the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club to monitor Cerebro's activities. The Inner Circle thus also learned about Kitty Pryde, and one of its leaders, Emma Frost, the White Queen, also went to contact her.

Xavier trained superhuman mutants at his so-called School for Gifted Youngsters, whereas Frost was headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy, where she also secretly trained young superhuman mutants such as the Hellions in the use of their powers. Hence, Xavier and Frost would each approach Pryde and her parents as the heads of private schools seeking to recruit her as a talented student. Neither Xavier nor Frost intended to reveal to Kitty's parents that their daughter was a mutant.

Kitty herself was unaware that she was mutant or that she had a superhuman power until the afternoon that Frost arrived to speak to her parents. While Frost was downstairs, Kitty went to her room upstairs, suffering her worst headache ever. Lying on her bed, she closed her eyes, wishing the headache would stop. It did. Kitty opened her eyes, and, to her surprise, found herself lying on the floor of her living room. Without knowing it, Kitty had used her "phasing" power for the first time, and had passed through her bed and the floor into the room below.

As Frost left, Xavier and his three X-Men arrived. The three X-Men took Kitty to a local malt shop, where Kitty and Storm began what evolved into a close friendship. Suddenly three Hellfire Club mercenaries burst into the shop and attacked the X-Men. Surprised and frightened, Kitty moved out of the way and found herself passing through the wall. Landing outside, she fell unconscious since she was still not used to utilizing her power. The White Queen used her telepathic powers to overcome the three X-Men, whom the Hellfire Club took into their hovercraft.

But the brave Kitty had decided to snoop around the hovercraft before it took off, and discovered the X-Men were aboard as prisoners. Unwilling to desert her new friend Storm or the others, she hid aboard the craft and used her new powers to find the captive X-Men in the Frost Industries complex to which the White Queen had taken them. Storm gave Kitty the X-Men's phone number and asked her to summon help. But one of the Hellfire Club mercenaries spotted Pryde, and the White Queen ordered her capture. Using her powers, Pryde got away long enough to phone the number.

Two Hellfire Club mercenaries in a car were just about to capture Pryde in Chicago when they were halted by the Jean Grey version of Phoenix, who had just arrived with her fellow X-Men Cyclops and Nightcrawler in response to Kitty's message. Phoenix found and comforted the frightened Kitty, who told her story to her and her X-Men colleagues. Pryde then helped the X-Men and their ally, the Dazzler, in rescuing their captive colleagues.

Phoenix used her mental powers to calm Carmen Pryde's rage over his daughter's disappearance. Mr. and Mrs. Pryde allowed Kitty to join Xavier's school, and soon afterwards she became the first member of the X-Men's Reserve Team. She originally took the code name Sprite, but later changed it to Ariel.

Kitty's constant companion is the small, alien, dragon-like creature Lockheed, whom she met when the X-Men were on another planet.

Over time Kitty grew close to the X-Man Wolverine, who became a mentor to her. While in Japan, Kitty was captured and put under the mental control of Ogun, the martial arts master who had once been Wolverine's teacher but had since become his enemy. Wolverine undertook a crash program to teach Kitty to become skillful enough in the Japanese martial arts to contend against Ogun. At the end of her training Kitty assumed the new code name Shadowcat, which she still uses today.

During the massacre of the mutant Morlocks by the Marauders, the Marauder called Harpoon injured Shadowcat with his energy spear. It also adversely affected her powers so that she could no longer regain her solidity. She was cured by the combined efforts of Doctor Doom and the Fantastic Four's Mister Fantastic.

Kitty's friendship with Storm has continued, but her best friend is Illyana Rasputin. Kitty at one time also had a crush on Illyana's older brother, the X-Man Colossus, this had since developed into firm friendship.