X-Men/Characters/80s Members

Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde/Shadowcat
At 13 years of age, Kitty Pryde was the youngest member to ever join the X-Men, and had the ability to become intangible at will and walk on thin air. She was something of a Viewpoint Character for younger readers, since she was 13 when she joined and had a teenager's point of view. Emma Frost and Charles Xavier fought over who would get to teach her; Kitty quickly bonded with her Cool Big Sis Storm, and wanted to go to Xavier's, but they were attacked and Kitty ended up saving the X-Men from the White Queen herself. She later adopted a pet dragon from outer space, and Wolverine and Storm became surrogate parental figures for her. As an X-Man, her greatest assets are her cleverness and hacking skills.


 * Author Appeal: Brian Bendis has been vocal in the past about her being his Comic Crush. She even became a supporting character, and briefly a love interest, to Spider-Man in Ultimate Spider-Man.
 * Joss Whedon states in the intro to his Fray comics that Kitty was his childhood crush.
 * Badass Adorable
 * Badass Bookworm (Knows her Waif Fu and is good with computers)
 * Brainy Brunette
 * Dragon Rider
 * Genre Savvy: Upon learning that Storm was attacked and left with puncture wounds in her neck and shunning sunlight, Kitty immediately loads up on vampire-hunting gear.
 * Kitty has been a superhero, and specifically an X-Man, since she was thirteen. In her better depictions in the last decade or so, she's savvy to the point of near-ennui.
 * Intangible Man (her powers)
 * Kid Sidekick: She started out as a sidekick to Wolverine until she had grown into an independent woman when she moved to Excalibur.
 * Naive Newcomer
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Ninja hacker genius superhero. With a pet dragon.
 * Not Quite Flight: Kitty can walk on the air. Which gets her where she needs to go, but at a normal walking pace.
 * Pillars of Moral Character: She gave The Beyonder a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, which was pretty much the Crowning Moment of Awesome for the entire Marvel Universe.
 * Power Incontinence: Back then, Shadowcat was stuck in her ghost state after her powers went haywire when she tried to phase an injured Rogue from a marauder Harpoon in the Mutant Massacre crossover.
 * This is not the only time she had experienced this. Recently, she was
 * Rummage Sale Reject: In her early days on the team Kitty attempted to design her own costume a number of times. As these were always based on what a girl her age would supposedly consider cool - in the '80s - they were always hideous. Most notable is the Dazzler-inspired one that included a whole array of eye-searing colors, metallic gold tights, leg warmers, and roller skates (also notable for causing Professor X to send her back to her room to change into something less ridiculous before they could leave for the mission du jour).
 * Shoulder-Sized Dragon: Lockheed.
 * Took a Level in Badass: Started out as a naive newcomer but after a few years of character development she became a ninja hacker ballet-dancing genius.
 * An old enemy of Logan's got hold of Kitty in the infamous "Kitty Pryde & Wolverine" limited series and taught her ninjitsu, the better to find and assassinate Logan himself. Kitty retained some of that skill set, and augmented it later with Krav Maga lessons from Wolverine. Kitty is a surprisingly adept unarmed combatant, and is very good at mixing it with her phasing ability.
 * Team Pet: Lockheed.
 * Valley Girl: she's book smart, but has been portrayed as ditzy and slightly shallow at times. This was Flanderized almost beyond recognition in the first episodes of X-Men: Evolution.
 * Walking Techbane: If she phases through anything electrical, it shorts out. This makes throwing her at a Sentinel's head a viable attack, and was used by Chris Claremont to let her beat Rogue and Phoenix by phasing through their brains.

Anna Marie/Rogue
A mutant girl with the power to temporarily absorb superpowers and memories from anyone she touches. It's potentially fatal and permanent if contact is held too long. She's a Southern runaway from a family in Mississippi and was adopted by Mystique and Destiny (though canon is inconsistent on whether she ran away because of or before her powers manifested, and depending on the writer, she may also actually be their biological daughter) and joined the Brotherhood of Mutants. During a fight she hospitalized the superheroine Ms. Marvel by permanently absorbing her powers of super-strength and flight, and joined the X-Men when the psychic imprints she had absorbed threatened to drive her insane. She has a long off and on romance with The Charmer Gambit. Recently with the help of Professor Xavier and Danger, she can


 * All Girls Want Bad Boys: Faced with a choice between gentle, earnest Joseph and slick charmer Gambit, with whom she already had a highly dysfunctional (even by X-Men standards) relationship in the past, Rogue of course opts for Gambit. Just to make sure, Joseph is killed off shortly afterwards.
 * She seems to be going down the same path, but this time Gambit seems the most gentle, earnest choice over.
 * Anti-Hero: Currently type II, if that, but Depending on the Writer.
 * The Atoner: She became this after an encounter with one of Carol Danvers' ex-lovers. Arguably one even before -- she shows great remorse when she comes face-to-face with Carol herself, and takes a laser blast for Wolverine, almost dying in the process.
 * Can't Have Sex Ever: Although there always were characters immune to her absorption power and there were many instances when she temporarily lost her power. . As of X-Men Legacy #224 she is in full control of her power and can have sex if she wants to, but did not rush to take advantage of that immediately.
 * Composite Character: Movie Rogue = Rogue + Kitty Pryde.
 * Continuity Snarl: After so many writers have done retcons on it, her origin is one huge mess.
 * Deep South
 * Flying Brick: When she had Ms. Marvel's powers.
 * Green Eyes
 * Has Two Mommies
 * Heel Face Turn
 * Kiss of Death: Her best-known application of her power was by kissing an (Always Male) adversary and absorbing his psyche. She did this quite a few times over the course of her career.
 * May-December Romance: She almost had a romantic fling with Magneto once upon a time. And in more than one alternate universe -- in the Age of Apocalypse universe, even gaining some sort of control over her powers, enough to mother at least one child by Magneto.
 * Mega Manning
 * Moral Event Horizon: In-universe, she obsessed over feeling she'd crossed it due to her actions with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants -- it took her at least 10 issues to realize she was not as irredeemable as she believed.
 * My Skull Runneth Over: Variation: this is an unfortunate by-product of her absorbing powers. She retains pieces of the psyches and personalities she drains even after the powers fade. This was the reason behind her Heel Face Turn, and it's gotten better or worse by varying degrees over the years.
 * Only Known by Their Nickname: She is known as 'Rogue' to everyone. Her real name was revealed in the comics around the time when the X-Men movies came out. Her last name, though, is still a mystery despite the readers now knowing her past.
 * In X-Men Forever, her full name, apparently, is "Anna Marie Raven."
 * Playing with Fire: When she stole Sunfire's powers.
 * Power Incontinence
 * Power Parasite: It's her superpower, making her a Power Sponge. In her first appearance, she got her Flying Brick ability by absorbing it from Ms Marvel. It took Ms M years to recover.
 * Progressively Prettier: When she was first created and joined the team, Chris Claremont had artists draw her as rather unattractive-looking, making her skinny, unkept, with an unpleasant-looking crew-cut hairstyle. This changed almost immediately upon Jim Lee's assignment to the book, and her 90's look, which shows her as supermodel-level hot, has been her default.
 * The Runaway: All versions of the backstory of Rogue have her running away from home as a young teen or pre-teen, although no two issues have been able to agree on whether she ran away after her mutation activated and left a boy in a coma, or had already run away from home before that because of an unstable and/or abusive home life.
 * Skunk Stripe: Though depictions since The Movie tend to follow Anna Paquin's styling, where only the front bangs are white, as opposed to the full white stripe from front to back.
 * Depending on the writer, either it's a secondary physical mutation, the effect of the absorption of her power (the preferred explanation since The Movie), or she alters her hair cosmetically by choice (the default assumption in the '80s, especially since the art evolved from her having two streaks to one -- in the letter column of one issue from that time period, when the practice was to have one of the characters answering the fans' letters, Wolverine claimed that Rogue's hair was dyed). In some stories, the streaks are there in her canonical childhood backstory; in her short-lived solo title in 2004 a flashback showed her with white bangs as an infant.
 * Southern Belle
 * Ship Sinking: Subverted with Antarctica. The writers, and a good chunk of the readers, assumed that would be the end of the Rogue/Gambit relationship. While it did leave its mark, the relationship eventually recovered and both characters seem perfectly content to forget it ever happened.
 * . Let's see how long that lasts.
 * Superpower Lottery: During a storyline in the early 2000s, she was jumpstarted by Sage, and got full access to the powers of everyone she'd ever touched. It didn't last, of course, but it was awesome for a while.
 * Touch of Death: When she was infected with the Strain 88 virus. Seeing a theme here?
 * Tsundere: Especially in the '90s X-Men cartoon.
 * Tsundere: Especially in the '90s X-Men cartoon.

Rachel Anne Summers/Phoenix, Marvel Girl
Rachel Summers (or Grey, depending on her mood) is the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey from an alternate dystopian future timeline where Robert Kelly was assassinated, and as a result, the Sentinels were allowed to take over the world. She used the Phoenix Force to go back in time to find her mother dead and her father married to Madelyne Pryor. She's essentially a way to get a Jean Grey-type character into the comics when they weren't allowed to bring Jean back. She was also Marvel's first (of many) "child from the future" characters. In addition to her mother's telepathy and telekinesis, Rachel can also send her astral form through time and across realities. She doesn't do this often though, since the rules of time travel make it largely ineffective. It also turns out her timeline is "special" so she doesn't need to be born in this one.


 * Anti-Hero: Type II, if that, but started out as type III-IV.
 * Anti-Hero Substitute: To her mother, Jean Grey.
 * Bad Future: Rachel escaped from, pretty much, the ultimate Crapsack World.
 * Civvie Spandex: Danskins, before becoming Phoenix.
 * Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Galactus. And technically, one time Rachel's own consciousness was in a coma while the Phoenix took him on.
 * Facial Markings: Her Hound marks are either tattoos or scars, depending on the writer/artist.
 * Fan Service Pack: By the time Excalibur was formed, she was insanely hot (but that's Alan Davis for you).
 * Fiery Redhead
 * Follow the Leader: She was the very first "character sent from the future to change the past" characters that lasted more then a single issue, and numerous others, including fellow X-Men characters Bishop and Cable have similar initial origins (born in a dystopia of sorts, sent back to change it, sticks around afterwords).
 * Glowing Eyes of Doom: And glowing tattoos, come to that.
 * Hot Wings: Starting with taking on the Phoenix mantle, and in recent years depicted as blue flames instead of yellow.
 * Identical Grandson
 * Kid From the Future
 * Legacy Character
 * Most Common Superpower: Originally averted: in her first appearances, Rachel was skinny, flat-chested and rather unattractive, since she came from a concentration camp. Of course, she filled out eventually.
 * Noodle Incident: Her transformation into a reptile-humanoid thing.
 * Psychic Powers
 * Sensor Character: She was a Hound.
 * Shell-Shocked Veteran
 * Sins of Our Fathers: Rachel was almost killed because of the crimes her mother had committed as Dark Phoenix.
 * Spikes of Villainy: Originally, Rachel's Hound uniform was depicted as black with metal studs around the neck and wrists, down her front, and along the outside of her arms and legs. Her Excalibur catsuit was an adaptation of this: red with spikes instead of studs, and none on the legs. Alan Davis consistently drew the black studded uniform in flashbacks, but other artists instead put Rachel in the very same red. The outfit mix-up may have started with Days of the Future Present, where Rachel refers to her costume as her "Hound uniform" even though it's really a variation.
 * Summers Family Tree: Obviously.
 * Superpower Lottery: Like her mother, Rachel has telekinesis and telepathy so powerful, it's almost limitless even when she's not Phoenix.
 * Superpowerful Genetics
 * Suspiciously Similar Substitute (for her "mother")

Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, Max Eisenhardt, Eric Magnus/Magneto
See Magneto

Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock/Psylocke
A pilot, secret agent, supermodel, and twin sister of Captain Britain. She developed psychic powers and spent some years as a supporting character in her brother's book, then had a brief but disastrous go at filling in for him and was blinded by his nemesis. After that she tried to quit superheroing but was kidnapped by Mojo and rescued by the New Mutants. She was initially a character with mediocre fighting skills but excellent telepathy. However, Chris Claremont, who has a dominatrix fetish, had her kidnapped in China and turned into a McNinja, getting magically body-merged with the mutant assassin Kwannon (resulting in the assassin looking like Psylocke, and Psylocke looking Asian but with her face still recognizable) and picking up super martial arts skills. She even got a psychic knife, which after she switched her powers from telepathy to telekinesis turned into a telekinetic katana.


 * Anti-Hero: but simply started out as a Wide-Eyed Idealist.
 * Author Appeal
 * Beta Couple: For several years, she and Archangel were the beta couple to Cyclops and Phoenix. Then Thunderbird III came along.
 * Betty and Veronica: Was Veronica to Jean's Betty in the early days of the Blue and Gold team split, where she tried to start an affair with Cyclops. The whole story was eventually dropped with no real explanation. Given that many of Jim Lee's personal comics outside of X-Men contain cold and remote but incredibly hot ninja-babes who wear ass-floss uniforms, it's possible that this is something he interjected into the storyline himself after Claremont left.
 * Blind Seer: Kind of. After she lost her eyes, she could use her psychic powers to see through the eyes of everyone around her. She also occasionally saw the future.
 * Blood Knight
 * Bulletproof Vest: One of the few non-invulnerable heroes to have the good sense to procure adequate body armor. Until she became a Stripperific ninja, of course.
 * Character Development: Originally, she was the farthest thing from an Action Girl one could get and still be a superhero, preferring to use Jedi Mind Tricks and sneaky telepathic tactics as opposed to outright conflict. After the Freaky Friday that gave her martial arts skills, she went from Squishy Wizard to Bare-Fisted Monk, putting herself In Harm's Way more often than not, and sometimes (Depending on the Writer) suffering humiliating defeats as a result of it.
 * Death Is Cheap: Killed by a swordsman named Vargas in a one-sided fight. Fans of the character were not happy. Resurrected without explanation a few years later, and it was a few years after that that anything resembling said explanation was offered... and it reeked of Hand Wave.
 * Everything's Better with Princesses: In the House of M reality, Betsy became Princess Elisabeth Glorianna Braddock, heir to the British throne and sister to the King.
 * Freaky Friday: Psylocke and Kwannon, in one of the few permanent examples. It wasn't a clean switch, however. Psylocke received Kwannon's martial arts training while Kwannon's inferior telepathy got a power upgrade. Both ladies retained their original abilities, and Psylocke's face was still recognizable. Kwannon eventually joined the X-Men herself as Revanche and remained on the team until her death from the Legacy Virus.
 * Giant Poofy Sleeves: Her very first superhero costume, as the second Captain Britain, had these. That motif carried over into her first X-Men costume before she dropped it in favor of a suit of body armor.
 * Heroic Sociopath: Depending on the Writer
 * Lady of War
 * McNinja
 * Most Common Superpower: Subverted; she's not the best endowed of the X-girls. Probably the most revealing, due to her "ninja" outfit.
 * Ms. Fanservice: Mostly serves on-panel as the "A" portion of the X-Men's T&A factor.
 * Powers as Programs: The X-Men's most egregious example. From her inception, no one seems able to decide what powers she should have. She started off as a telepath/precog, then dropped the precognition in favor of stronger telepathy, then got a "psychic knife" after her Race Lift. A near-death experience left her with the ability to teleport through shadows in addition to that, and then she lost all her powers during a fight with the Shadow King, only to come back with telekinesis and a shiny new sword. And that was before she died and came back...
 * Psychic Powers
 * Race Lift: She turns from British caucasian girl to Asian.
 * In Harm's Way: Kwannon's mutant telepathy was much weaker than Psylocke's, and the psychic knife was a way of focusing her power. Betsy herself never had need of such a thing before the body switch, as she was perfectly capable of frying people's brains from a distance. Once the ladies were switched, however, Betsy probably liked the challenge in using it since she became a bit of an action junkie.
 * Statuesque Stunner
 * Stripperiffic: The ninja bathing suit. 'Nuff said.
 * Thigh-High Boots
 * Thong of Shielding
 * Took a Level in Badass: Possibly an inadvertent subversion -- while on paper going from supporting psychic to badass ninja sounds like an upgrade, she actually proved far less effective in ninja mode, losing most of her super powers, frequently filling in as the Worf of the team, and getting rather brutally eviscerated by Sabretooth, an enemy she had previously been able to defeat by psychic powers alone.
 * There were somewhat justifying circumstances to that. Wolverine had previously "popped a claw" into 'tooth's head, and as he told her after she smacked him with a Psychic Knife: -->"Since the runt popped his claw on me -- the glow don't work no more."
 * Anyway, Depending on the Writer... it counted as played straight (ninjas do evade a lot of attacks, unlike her previous, armor-clad self... plus her psychic blade in combination with her superior telepathy proved often to be a Game Breaker) or subverted (The Worf Effect mentioned above).
 * Women in Refrigerators: Initially averted -- when her brother's evil dimensional counterpart tried to rape her, she responded by killing him, messily. Then a few issues later, she had her eyes poked out for no real purpose except to motivate him to Shoot the Dog. She got better, thankfully.
 * The Worf Effect: As mentioned above, ever since her Race Lift, the poor girl's become the punching bag for every villain on the block. Fortunately she seems to be getting more effective now.
 * Zettai Ryouiki (in her battle costume)

Alison Blaire/Dazzler
See Dazzler.

Longshot
A four-fingered slave, created by the Mojoverse to be a TV star. Supposedly the hero who would free the Mojoverse from its tyrannical despot, he's had some trouble with that over the years. First appearing as a naive, lucky fool (and in a love triangle against his will with Rogue and Dazzler), then becoming a less naive, not quite as lucky, hero. Friends of his tend to end up in the worst way: Ricochet Rita was turned into Spiral, Dazzler miscarried their child. It's worth noting that he was the second non-mutant to join the team.


 * Bishonen: The reason for Longshot's attractiveness.
 * Boldly Coming: He's been romancing "alien" (human and human-mutants) women since first stepping foot on Earth. Since his marriage to Dazzler ended, he's been making plenty of human women very, very happy. Sometimes repeatedly.
 * Born Lucky: His powers.
 * Chick Magnet: Ladies love him.
 * Cloudcuckoolander
 * Even the Guys Want Him: In his first appearance, Ultimate Longshot drew the eye of Ultimate Colossus. Who, in fairness, is gay.
 * The Fool
 * Four-Fingered Hands
 * Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Explicitly a part of how his luck powers work in the earlier parts of his continuity. So long as his motives are pure rather than selfish, everything that can possibly go in his favor will do so, frequently in drastic fashion. If he attempts to use his luck for his own profit, however - such as his attempt in his introductory LS to work as a stuntman - his luck turns against him and reality quite painfully ensues.
 * Only Known by Their Nickname: He has a real name, but doesn't remember it.
 * Outdated Outfit: Aside from his leather jumpsuit, he still also has a mullet.
 * Later on in the X-Factor issues, he got a slight haircut.
 * Psychic Powers: Longshot has psychometry, in which he can read "psychic imprints" that people leave on objects that they have handled and sometimes can even look into the future of the person or object he touches.
 * Refugee From TV Land: He's from Mojoworld, where TV is life, and life is controlled by Mojo.
 * Winds of Destiny Change

Forge
A Cheyenne indian, born to be a shaman. He ran from his responsibilities and joined the military, only to conjure up some badassery in Vietnam and releasing the Trickster. Then he worked for the US government as their gadget man, only to create the gun that stripped Storm (accidently: it was meant to be Rogue) of her powers. He nursed her back to health, then got a big proverbial backhand for it when she found out he was at fault. Sacrificed the X-Men (at the time) with their permission to lock away the entity he had released, after it wrecked havoc in Dallas. He eventually joined the X-Men and wanted to marry Storm, but ultimately left her (and the team) for Mystique when he felt Ororo didn't love him. You can imagine how well that relationship went, and he regretted his actions when Storm went on to marry the Black Panther. Supposedly, he'll be Genesis in the future.


 * Anti-Hero: Originally usually presented as mixed traits from type II and IV, but debatable as he technically started out as a weapon-dealing, ex-Vietnam war criminal, so Warren Ellis probably had a good point in interpreting himas type V or a Designated Hero Villain Protagonist.
 * Artificial Limbs
 * The Atoner: He joined the X-Men to make up for making a superhuman-depowering gun. And also in the hope of getting into Storm's pants.
 * Ditzy Genius: (In X-Men Evolution and Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon)
 * Florence Nightingale Effect: Storm first, then Mystique.
 * Gadgeteer Genius
 * Magical Native American
 * Mr. Fixit: Forge, whose mutant ability helps him build machines by simply imagining what they should do, rather than working out the pesky details.
 * Only Known by Their Nickname: His real name is not revealed.
 * Techno Wizard: A classic example.
 * Totally Radical (in X-Men Evolution cartoon. Made rather funny because he actually looked a LOT like Fez from That '70s Show...)
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous??: Storm fans hated Forge for breaking up with her just as she was going to accept his proposal, leaving her for Mystique. Debate over who was wrong for the break up can get intense, but the two ex-lovers eventually met up and agreed that both were at fault to some extent.
 * And then Warren Ellis transformed him in a dangerous villain, justifying this choice with repeated references to his unfortunate love story with Storm. And then he.