When people talk about the X-Men, they usually are talking about Wolverine, the group’s most popular character since he joined the team in 1975. Or perhaps they’re talking about Rogue or Gambit or the Beast or Phoenix or Storm or Jean Grey/Phoenix/Marvel Girl/whatever-the-heck-her-name-is or Cyclops, the founding member and, in many ways, the heart and soul of the X-Men, even during those periods when he wasn’t with the team.

But to me, the embodiment of the X-Men has always been and always will be a young genius named Katherine Pryde, nicknamed “Kitty,” who went through several code names (Sprite, Ariel) before settling on Shadowcat.

Kitty has never been the most prominent member of the team. There was also a lengthy period of time where she was associated with the British branch of the X-Men, Excalibur—indeed, she was a founding member of that team, and remained with them for as long as they existed. But still, she has endured and, to my mind, is really what the X-Men are all about.

From the very first page of the very first issue of Uncanny X-Men in 1963, the center of the X-Men mythos has been a school: once Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, now the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. The X-Men’s home and headquarters has almost always been this school, and even on those occasions when they abandoned it, whether for the outback of Australia or an island in the Bermuda Triangle, they always returned there eventually.

XAVIER: The human race is not  …