Jewish fanboys unite!

Like many young Jewish men who were into comic books I had a mad crush on Kitty Pryde. What was there not to like? Michael Green has a fantastic column on what made Kitty Pryde so awesome to all of us Jewish comic geeks (and non-Jewish comic geeks as well! Rivers Cuomo of Weezer name checked Kitty on the song “In the Garage”). Except it seems that Green was slightly more geeky and insular than I was back in the day…

So why did she shine? Why did – who are we kidding? – why does everyone crush on Kitty so hard?

Well… because she was pretty, but attainably so. She was descended from Holocaust victims and survivors, and she fought evil in their memory. She was a genius with a computer; she was plucky in a fight. Also, she had a pet dragon.

She was drawn adoringly by artists who adored her as we did, rendered delicate and sylphlike in a world of globular breasted, fetish-wearing dominatrixes.

She was our fictional Natalie Portman, before we knew that girls like Natalie Portman could actually exist.

Yes, her phasing powers were passive, but they were cool. They let her be the perfect thief and spy. Plus, we never had to worry that she’d get hurt; bullets passed her by like high school sex passed by those reading X-Men comics.

In a way, Kitty’s selective intangibility itself seems an apt metaphor for the Jew in the modern Western world. She was both of and not-of this world. An embodiment of the immigrant’s wish to be present and still unaffected by one’s surroundings. There and participating, yet untouchable when need be.

And then there was that Star of David around her neck.

Loved that Kitty. Piotr Rasputin was one lucky guy. Read on true believers!

Tags: fanboys, kitty pryde, weezer, x-men