Creating Shadowcat
This great gem from the past comes from the Syfy Channel’s blog:
The X-Men’s Kitty Pryde has also been known as Sprite and Shadowcat, but if one of the suggestions in artist John Bryne’s 1978 letter to writer Chris Claremont was followed, we might instead be referring to her today as Sparrowhawk.
A year and a half before the character made her debut in Uncanny X-Men #129, Byrne sent an illustrated letter to Claremont explaining the powers of the new superhero and suggesting that Kitty Pryde be, well, not an X-Men, exactly, but the first member of what would eventually become known as the New Mutants.
Byrne wrote:
MY CONCEPT HERE IS THAT ARIEL SHOULD BE NOT SO MUCH A NEW MEMBER OF THE X-MEN PER SE, BUT RATHER THE FIRST MEMBER OF A SECOND TEAM, A KIND OF “X-MEN·IN·TRAINING” TEAM
The artwork is classic and really shows the detail, work and effort that was put into Byrne/Claremont era X-Men comics of the late 1970s. That creative team was responsible for creating many of the most memorable characters - Storm, Wolverine, Collossus and Rogue - which are the most beloved by fans today.