To be fair, Kitty was originally designed to be an audience identification character for the X-Men, something they hadn't had in years. A normal middle-class kid aside from her mutancy. Claremont and Byrne apparently clashed over Claremont's decision to make her a supergenius in the fields of physics and computer hardware from the outset as Byrne felt it made her less relatable and more un-normal.

Cypher served much the same role in the New Mutants, and he was only a "un-normal" in areas relating directly to his powers.