Artie Maddicks

Characteristics

• Height- 5'6
• Weight- 125 lbs
• Eye Color- White
• Skin Color- Pink

Biography

Mutant

Artie was raised by his father, Dr. Carl Maddicks, until his eleventh birthday, when he gained his powers. Artie mutated into a lumpy pink form with no nose and large round eyes. Furthermore, the speech center of his brain was altered, rendering him mute. Desperate, Dr. Maddicks forced Dr. Hank McCoy to help him make a cure. McCoy was used as Dr. Maddicks' guinea pig, while Artie watched. X-Factor came to save McCoy and ended up saving Artie as well. Brand Corporation security guards (whom Dr. Maddicks worried would kill his son) arrived as he fired a gun at them. The guards fire back, killing him. Afterwards, Artie became the ward of X-Factor. As a part of X-Factor's group of youthful pupils, the "X-Terminators", he first met his friend Leech, a Morlocks boy with green skin who possesses the ability to negate other mutants' superhuman abilities. He also befriends several other young mutants, such as Boom Boom, Rictor, Rusty and Skids. For a time, Artie and the personnel of X-Factor live aboard Ship, a massive artificial intelligence with a spacecraft body that dwarfs all skyscrapers. When Ship is overtaken by a booby trap implanted by its old master Apocalypse, it manages to bring Artie deep inside itself, to its own computer brain. Artie manages to translate that there is a bomb attached to the brain. X-Factor, working with the kids, manages to defuse the bomb and it explodes harmlessly far above the island of Manhattan.

St. Simons

Some time later, X-Factor splits their wards between two boarding schools that were about a mile apart. Artie's school, St. Simons recognizes that he, Leech and the tech-manipulating child Taki are mutants, and more importantly, best friends and were fully willing to work around this. When the events of Inferno began, N'Astirh's demon hordes first went after Artie and Leech, as they were powerful children. It was determined the two were too old but the demon kept them on hand anyway. The other members of the X-Terminators, joined by Taki, leave their new living situations to help rescue him. Artie is forced to witness at least two murders of innocent humans guards before he is rescued. Artie, Leech and Taki move back to St. Simons for a while, where they foil a mutant kidnapping plot by a group of murderous humans.

Generation X

Gene Nation disrupts the school with another kidnapping scheme, this time successful. After Leech is rescued from Gene Nation by Generation X, he and Artie came to live at the Massachusetts Academy, the home of the teenage mutant team. There they soon met Franklin Richards (recently "orphaned" after the Onslaught incident) who rounded out the trio of "The Daydreamers." They also met Howard the Duck and his two female companions, Beverly Switzler and Tana Nile. When Black Tom Cassidy attacks the school, an extension of his plant form personally attacks the children in the area called the Danger Grotto. Howard, at great personal risk, managed to distract Tom while Artie and the others make a break for it. Tom is seemingly destroyed in an explosion that sets fire to the entire grotto. Man-Thing arrives and took the entire group away, into several adventures. When Franklin's family return from an alternate universe Artie and Leech return to the Academy, where they start to take more active roles. They are given image inducers to hide their appearances, and frequently used them to wreak playful havoc. After Generation X suffers the death of Synch due to terrorist activity, it was decided that the younger members of the team, including the M Twins, Leech, Artie, and the vacant but functional form of Penance, would go to live in Monaco with M's father. During a mission, the New Avengers viewed a screen of de-powered mutants. Artie was on that screen with other mutants de-powered after the House of M event.

Fantastic Four

Artie and Leech were invited to Franklin's birthday party and received from both him and Reed Richards special keys to their own room at the Baxter Building; should they wish to move from Utopia. Artie also received a special helmet made by Valeria Richards which allows him to communicate by creating images in the air - he remains mute due to the deformity caused by his mutations.

Powers and Abilities

Powers

Psionic Pictograms : Artie projects holograms of his thoughts. Usually he uses his power to communicate, because he is mute. However, he can make large-scale holograms as a means of defense. Artie has pink skin, and can also tap into and project the thoughts of other people, at times on the scale of a city's population.

Mind Lock: ability to paralyze others mentally and physically, although his control was very limited and easily disrupted.

Affliations

• Morlocks
• X-Factor formerly
• X-Terminators formerly
• Generation X formerly

In other media

Television

Wolverine and the X-Men

Films

X2: X-Men United

• Although not confirmed, there is a boy named Artie who is in X-Men 2: X-Men united. However, he looks like a normal human being. The only thing that makes him a distuingishable as a mutant is a purple forked tongue, like a snake.

• He also appears in the novel as a normal human being with a forked tongue, except he is not mute.