The question of a B-list character is one that always kind of annoys me in a way, because it’s essentially pigeonholing a character that ends up being a very hard box to get out of. Everyone remember a decade or so ago when Iron Man was essentially a B-list character? And the years before that as well? And, of course, there’s the entire C-list brigade that makes up the Guardians of the Galaxy team. In the end, it’s not the characters that are B-list, it’s the writing and creative effort put into them.
But to play this particular game, I’ll go back quite a few years to one of my favorite characters of all time with Kitty Pryde. I had started reading Uncanny X-Men in the late 170’s run, not long after Rogue had joined the group and right as we got into the first Maddie Pryor chaos, and I had liked what I had seen of this characters. My appreciation grew as I saw her thrust into dealing with the New Mutants book and befriending Illyana, who is probably a hair below Kitty in how much I like them as characters. When I ended up discovering my first comic book store and the concept of back issues, I ended up going in deep for the Uncanny X-Men run because it was the “it” book for me at the time. So while I was catching up, enjoying the Days of Future Past storyline, Kurt’s pirate/fantasy bedtime story for the young Illyana and a host of other tales, it wasn’t until the Brood storyline that I was completely hooked. I loved the concept of the Starjammers and then the whole breadth of space that was being delved into and the Brood really drove home some great character stories.
But for me, it was this book, seeing Kitty in this form on the cover and throughout the pages as she fought back constantly. That morphed over time as I delved into the Kitty Pryde & Wolverine miniseries, which reinforced events, the way she and Piotr had a complicated relationship and then the wonderfully expansive and thoroughly engaging run on Excalibur.
The character has sadly been quite underserved when it comes to the films and I really don’t expect more than that at this point. But the character over my tenure of reading X-Men books has long made her my favorite of what you could call a B-list character.
