Kitty Pryde aka Ariel aka Sprite aka Shadowcat was created in 1980 by the X-Men dream team, John Byrne and Chris Claremont.
Kitty has been a little sister and girlfriend to several X-Men.
Kitty is one of the few named Jewish characters in the Marvel Universe.
I imagine a lot of others are, because most of Marvel's writers and artists were Jewish back in the 1960s.
As a matter of fact, there have been several long in depth articles written about the religion of Marvel superheroes.
But back to Kitty.
Kitty was a throwback to the original Marvel formula with the X-Men.
The teen outcast that discovers she really is a bit more different than the other kids.
In her case, a mutant.
Kitty's powers are cool.
She phases through things.
But it's a tad more complicated than just that.
Actually, it would take a Physics professor to really explain all the stuff Kitty can do.
And James Kakalios did just that in his book "The Physics of Superheroes".
Check it out sometime, it's very interesting.
Besides her superpowers, Kitty was trained in martial arts in a manner similar to Psylocke (as it it was all pretty much downloaded into her consciousness) so she is versed in various martial arts.
She speaks several languages including Shi'ar and Skrull, and she is a hi-tech genius.
