ARTIE

 

ARTIE

Real Name: Arthur Maddicks

First Appearance: X-Factor (Vol. 1) #2, March 1986

Powers: Arthur “Artie” Maddicks’ genetic mutation grants him pink skin, no hair follicles, head bumps, an unusually shaped skull, large bulging eyes with no pupils, and deteriorated vocal cords which has rendered him incapable of speech. It has been stated that the language center of his brain is different than a normal human's, as he thinks entirely in images instead of words.

His mutant power is projective telepathy. He is able to create holographic pictograms that represent his own or other people’s thoughts and memories. Typically projected like "thought bubbles", Artie's pictograms are apparently completely silent but can move and become animated. They are not truly illusions, and so while the sudden appearance of a lifelike pictogram might be startling, it cannot truly deceive someone into thinking a person or object is there when its not. Artie is capable of thought-casting, using his pictograms to project events occurring some distance away from him. His mental imaging power is used for communicative purposes (to compensate for his muteness).

His power is partially psychometric, making him particularly capable of focusing on places he has been before, or on people he has met before, especially if he's touched them. Artie can mentally search for and locate people he's familiar with over a much greater distance than if he mentally searched for someone unfamiliar. Through this mind-link, he can observe what's happening to that person now, scan through events that happened in the past to them, or illustrate their memories or private thoughts with his pictograms. Artie can also mentally probe, visualize, and track people without projecting visually. On rare occasions, Artie has demonstrated a mind-lock power, actively shutting down the mind of someone so they enter a fugue state. This requires sustained concentration on his part, however, and the person will awaken whenever Artie turns his attention away from them.

After M-Day, Artie was confirmed as depowered, although he retained his muteness and physical deformities. When he joined the Future Foundation, he was given a helmet invented by Valeria Richards that mimics his image-projection power.