New WHAT IF…? Novel Features Betsy Braddock, Kitty Pryde as Phoenix vs. Dr. Doom

Nerdist: Katherine “Kitty” Pryde has used many codenames in her decades as an X-Man. She’s been Ariel, Sprite, Shadowcat, but always a stalwart member of the X-Men, ever since 1980. The phasing mutant joined the team right after Jean Grey died while under the control of the Dark Phoenix. But what if Kitty herself stole the power of the Phoenix Force? That’s the premise of a new prose novel, Marvel: What If….Kitty Pryde Stole the Phoenix Force (An X-Men and America Chavez Story) by Rebecca Podos. Arriving on October 14, this novel is the next installment in Random House Worlds’ What If… series.

In this new novel, joining Kitty is ‘Captain Britain’ Betsy Braddock, who you may know as the original Psylocke. Also joining are Jean Grey, Logan/Wolverine, Scott Summers/Cyclops, Ororo Munroe/Storm, and other iconic X-Men. The dimension-hopping Young Avenger America Chavez and Doctor Doom, who have made appearances in the three previous What If…? novels, now step into the spotlight in the new book. In the following excerpt, Kitty details a conversation between herself and Betsy, on their way home from a 1975 disco. And yes, this conversation confirms Kitty as bisexual. This is something the comics themselves made canon recently, after much fan speculation.

You can read a full excerpt from Marvel: What If….Kitty Pryde Stole the Phoenix Force (An X-Men and America Chavez Story) below:

After a night out at a 1975 disco, Kitty Pryde and Betsy Braddock take a break from bodyguarding Jean Grey and wonder if anything they do in the past will fix their future.

ONLY ON THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN RIDE BACK TO WESTCHESTER, and after Jean and Ororo have fallen asleep on each other’s shoulders, does Kitty dare to speak aloud.

“To recap,” she starts, little more than a whisper. “Neither of us has a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or a hot person of any gender waiting to dance with us in the future. We probably don’t have jobs. Dunno about RCX, but Emma Frost isn’t super forgiving when her henchmen go on sabbatical without permission. Okay, sure, you’ve got a brother, and maybe you do Sunday-night happy hours and reminisce about your childhood puppy—”

“We do not,” Betsy whispers back. “I love my brother, of course. But he’s quite preoccupied by being a father and husband and champion of Britain, and all that. Between his obligations and my work with the agency, there isn’t much time left for family din­ners.”

“Well, I haven’t been back to Deerfield for a whole bunch of Hanukkahs now, and I doubt my parents hold their breaths until I return their twice-yearly phone calls where they mostly complain about the other one, ten years after their divorce.” Kitty fiddles with the fringe on her borrowed purse. “Betsy . . . Whatever we’re here to do with Jean, you really think we can fix our lives? Fix the whole world?”

Betsy considers this for a long moment. “I think that we can’t predict the impact one life would have upon the world, but it might be greater even than we imagine. Maybe a future with Jean in it is a future where the X-Men still exist and Charles Xavier’s dreams have borne fruit.”

“Mutants sharing the world with Homo sapiens, living to­gether in peace. Yeah. Maybe.” She tries to imagine it . . . or rather, to remember the wish she used to whisper into the dark as a teen­ager but has long since left behind. A world without instructive pamphlets like Know the Signs: How to Spot the Mutant Menace in Your School, City, or Household. Without news segments dedi­cated to reporting each day’s successful capture or killings of mu­tants, tallied by a wild-eyed anchorman with a marker on a massive whiteboard. Without a thirteen-year-old Kitty Pryde, waking from nightmares of Sentinels storming across the lawn at Miss Hester’s to smash a massive metal fist through her dorm room window and drag her from her bed, too frozen with fear to phase away. Maybe in that world, she would’ve told her parents the truth of who she was. Maybe she’d have more people in her life to tell the truth to. Favorite teachers, or partners, or best friends.

“Kitty, I’ve been wondering. Have you had any of your episodes—your slips, I mean—since we’ve come back in time? You haven’t mentioned any.”

“No,” she realizes as she says it. She turns to stare out the win­dow but of course can’t see anything beyond her own stark reflec­tion in the rain-pattered glass. It’s strange. She used to be afraid of the slips and what they said about her—that she was even more of a freak than mutant-haters would have guessed. Only it wasn’t just that. She was scared of how she felt afterward. How sometimes, she wished she could have stayed in the world that she’d figured was a by-product of slowly losing her mind. Sometimes she felt she would’ve given anything, everything, if she could forever be the version of herself that she was in that other, better world. “Don’t you think that means something?” Kitty asks.

Without looking, she can’t tell what Betsy thinks of her confes­sion. And for a long moment, Betsy doesn’t answer.

Finally she begins, “I do. Kitty, if we—”

Jean bolts upright across from them, startling Ororo awake as she and Betsy jump in their seats. “The professor,” Jean says, voice still blurry with sleep. “He says there’s company back at the man­sion. Not a mutant. She’s looking for me. She says she’s a friend.”

Kitty feels Betsy’s body tense beside her, along with her own. Could this be the threat they’ve been braced for? Do you think we should tell her now? Just go ahead and step on the damn butterfly? She can’t keep her leg from bouncing against her seat with nerves. This could be it: the whole reason for their being here.

And their only reason for staying.

Betsy shakes her head subtly. We can’t stop these two from re­turning to the mansion. And maybe these are the best circum­stances we could hope for. An early warning and the mansion on alert. We’ll just have to be ready for what comes.

The four of them catch a yellow taxi at the train station, and even though Jean maintains regular contact with Xavier to keep a telepathic eye on things, Kitty’s still relieved to find the mansion peaceful upon arrival. Only the light in Xavier’s office window so late at night suggests that anything is out of the ordinary. There’s no storm of activity within the mansion when they enter, no sound of running feet from above as the four of them climb the grand staircase, no shouts from the office as they approach. The profes­sor seems perfectly unharmed in his chair at the desk. Behind him, Scott leans against a bookshelf in giant, red-lensed aviators, a T-shirt, sweatpants, and plaid slippers. Not exactly poised for battle.

“Welcome back, you four,” Xavier says pleasantly. “Our guest has said she’s here to speak with you specifically, Jean, and we thought it best to wait until you all arrived.”

The guest turns out to be a young woman about her same age with dark, dust-covered curls, wearing black jeans torn violently at both knees and a rain-dampened denim jacket with red-and-white-striped shoulders and starred patches down both sleeves. She must be powerful to tackle a powerful telepath like Jean Grey.

But as the woman turns her large brown eyes on Jean, she looks nothing but relieved.

“America Chavez,” she introduces herself. “I’ve been looking for—” Then her gaze skips over to the pair of them and snags, the slightest surprise registering before she tilts her head and tightens her jaw. “Didn’t expect to find you two here.”

Marvel: What If….Kitty Pryde Stole the Phoenix Force (An X-Men and America Chavez Story) by Rebecca Podos arrives on October 14.