47 Years Ago Today the X-Men Introduced Two Characters Who Would Change the Team Forever

The X-Men, as a team comic, are no strangers to introducing large swathes of characters at once. Teams need large casts to work, after all, and introducing them all at once frees the creators to dive right into the juicy drama and adventures instead of wasting time on set-up. They’ve been doing this since the very beginning, starting with X-Men (1963) #1, where the original five X-Men, Professor X, and Magneto all made their debut. As if deciding that record of plot-essential, beloved characters needed to be topped, Giant-Size X-Men #1 gave us the all-new X-Men team, which would go on to become their most popular incarnation, giving us some of Marvel’s biggest heroes of all in Storm and Wolverine. Needless to say, the X-Men have a history of introducing a whole horde of characters who go on to become book-defining, but even for a team like them that is constantly evolving, introducing multiple characters like that at once is rare.

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Typically, new characters fall to the wayside and are forgotten. That’s exactly what makes the introduction of a new character that becomes a staple so incredible, as they have everything working against them. That’s doubly true when there is already an established, beloved cast, like the all-new team. Today, we’re celebrating an issue that not only gave us a character who breaks that mold, but went above and beyond and gave us two. X-Men (1963) #129 introduced both Kitty Pryde and Emma Frost, two X-Men who have gone on to become leaders of the entire mutant community. Nowadays, they run the newest school for young mutants, but in the beginning, they were bitter enemies on opposite sides. Heck, this issue introduced us to the Hellfire Club as a whole and, believe it or not, actually came during the biggest, most important X-Men story of all in “The Dark Phoenix Saga.” This issue is downright monumental, and it hit store shelves forty-seven years ago today.

Two Women From Wildly Different Worlds

This issue came as the first in the legendary “Dark Phoenix Saga,” kicking things off with the Hellfire Club spying on the X-Men as they received a ping that Cerebro picked up two new mutants. One was Dazzler, who debuted next issue, and the other was none other than Kitty Pryde. Emma Frost made her way to Kitty’s home first, where she shmoozed her way into talking Kitty’s parents into considering sending the young girl to Emma’s private school. She ran away, finding the X-Men, who she liked a whole lot more. Of course, nothing stayed peaceful, with the X-Men doing battle with the Hellfire Knights, only for Emma Frost to knock them all unconscious and steal them away. Unbeknownst to anyone, Kitty snuck aboard, making use of her new phasing powers to try and save the X-Men. Not only did this serve as a great intro to what these characters can do, but also to who they are and their place in the story.

Kitty and Emma represented two different status quos. Emma was a dark perversion of the X-Men, specifically acting as an evil version of Professor X and Jean Grey. She was recruiting new mutants to create an evil army, training them to serve the Hellfire Club above all else. She was an evil version of a very familiar picture. Kitty, meanwhile, was entirely new. She was the youngest member of this cast by a country mile, bringing a new perspective that was way more innocent and precocious than anyone else, which was the exact opposite of Emma. Even down to how she didn’t understand her unique phasing powers, Kitty was the embodiment of new beginnings. Meanwhile, the White Queen mastered a familiar power set and represented a very old, powerful organization. They were positioned to perfectly contrast each other from the very beginning, which amped the tension a hundredfold whenever they were on the page together.

Kitty and Emma Changed the X-Men Forever With Original Perspectives

Kitty was the first new young teen added to the team since the original five, and she brought back the youthful perspective that their team had lost. Over the years, she grew and matured alongside the X-Men comics themselves. She experienced a ton of pain and trauma, growing darker just like the comics did, but through it all, Kitty has shown that she’s still dedicated to the dream they all fight for, even though she’s likely to run out and fight that call as much as she will embrace it. Emma, meanwhile, is one of the X-Men’s best redemption stories. She started as nothing more than a selfish, two-bit mastermind out for her own gain, but over time she opened her heart to others. Nowadays, she is just as trusted as leaders like Cyclops, fighting for all of mutantkind out of love and hope. She is the type of changed heart that the X-Men were founded to foster.

Both of these women have starred in countless iconic stories, but their biggest story today is told in the pages of X-Men United, where they both run the new psychic school. The fact that these two started out so differently, but have united to work towards a single goal, speaks volumes to everything the X-Men represent. They’ve always been about coexistence and bridging the gap between people who don’t understand each other. Kitty and Emma have had a fierce, destructive rivalry over the years, but they’ve learned to put it behind them and trust each other, even when they don’t like each other most of the time. The idea that they’ve learned to look past the inadequacies that define the other is a core tenet of the X-Men. No matter how they feel, they know that they can rely on each other, and that connection transcends where they came from. They look towards the future, as all X-Men should. They are the future, pushing forward together with someone who is nothing like them.

These two are wonderful characters, but which X-Man is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below!