First appearance of Lance Alvers (Avalanche) and Kitty Pride (Shadowcat). While Kitty is essentially a match for her comic book counterpart, Lance is actually a new character created for the series. He is an amalgamation of Rictor (Julio Richter) and Avalanche (Dominikos Petrakis), two characters from the comics who have earthquake based powers. While Lance shares his code name with the latter, his appearance is similar to the former.