No More Pryde!

 

Yes, it's true.

I've read tens of thousands of comic books.

When I'm asked who my favorite DC character is, I answer without hesitation - Superman.

The same is true with Marvel Comics. Spider-Man? Wolverine? Iron Man?

No, it's none of those.

It's Kitty Pryde, also referred to as Shadowcat (also briefly known as Sprite, but I won't go down that rabbit hole). Currently, she is referred to as Kate Pryde, giving her a more age-appropriate name.

I don't care. It's all the same character to me.

She started in Uncanny X-Men in 1980, a young teenager with a lot of enthusiasm and moxie. She is very intelligent, a computer whiz. She is Jewish, one of the earliest characters identified as such. Her powers centered on a phasing ability - to become intangible and pass through objects and people.

She is similar to Peter Parker - a very human and realistically envisioned individual. She has her ups and downs, makes mistakes, cares deeply about others.

She has a companion, a small dragon named Lockheed. You can see it walking beside her in the picture above,

Unlike most female characters of the 80s and 90s, she was usually drawn much more realistically - shorter, not as curvy.

Like most comic characters, she didn't age at the same rate as me. Her current portrayal would suggest she's ten to fifteen years older than her introduction 42 years ago. Me? No such luck,  I'm a full 42 years older. And more and more, it's beginning to feel like that.

But now, I'm having to make some tough decisions. I am preparing my comic books for a mass sale. I have specific goals in mind, a dollar number I'm trying to get to. I've gotten 40 boxes ready, over 6,000 comics, and I sense I'm falling short of my goal.

So, I've decided to part with the vast chunk of my Kitty Pryde collection because achieving this goal is so important to me. I have hundreds of comic books that include her.  

She was always my most interesting collecting challenge - unlike some other heroes, like Superman and Spider-Man, she did not have her own title (except for a few mini-series). She went from one X-Men team to another. You had to stay alert as to where she would appear next. Uncanny X-Men, Excalibur, X-treme X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, Wolverine First Class, Wolverine and the X-Men, the Marauders - these are just a few of the major ones.

Now that I am in Phase 4 of my project - going through the core boxes of my collection - the decisions are getting harder and harder.

But to paraphrase Spider-Man's Uncle Ben, "With great comic books comes great responsibility."

And  I want to be responsible. The goal of what the mass sale could do is more important than the collection itself.