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.

FIREFIST

 

FIREFIST

Real Name: Russell Collins

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

Powers: Russell "Rusty" Collins is a mutant pyrokinetic, able to mentally create and manipulate heat and flame. Initially, Rusty's power would ignite flames over the surface of his body, and then spurts or tongues of fire would fly off from him. After some practice, Rusty learned how to start fires anywhere within his line-of-sight. He could control the size, shape, and intensity of his fires with great precision, and manipulate their movements.

He could not only cause specific objects to catch fire from a distance, he could even create a bridge of flame through open air, connecting two different objects by fire. He was also able to manipulate flame created from other sources and could magnify their intensity or diminsh them. With concentration, he could generate heat fields without open flames, such as a wall of sufficient heat around himself to melt oncoming projectiles, or focus enough heat through his hands to cook food (often making popcorn this way). He could heat most metals enough to reshape them by hand.

Later on, he also learned to use his power like an energy blast, projecting a concentrated stream of flame that rushed out from his hands. While using his powers, he instinctively generated a super-thin, invisible psionic energy field around him that protected him from heat and flame, both his own and external sources.

SKIDS

 

SKIDS

Real Name: Sally Blevins

First Appearance: X-Factor (Vol. 1) #7, August 1986

Powers: Skids’ mutant ability is that her body generates a transparent force field around itself which protects her from various forms of attack and can be deactivated via mental concentration.

It deflects solid projectiles and disperses energy on contact: Directed kinetic force, thermal energy, electromagnetism, etc. The field also inhibits friction between surfaces, making it incredibly slippery. Skids can slide on the field under her feet to travel, and is quite difficult to keep a hold of. The lack of friction allows her to “skate” across most surfaces at high speeds (well over 100 miles per hour with sufficient momentum).

Initially, the field was constantly active and only operated as a form-fitting force of one or two-inch thickness around her. She eventually gained full control over her power and could expand the field large enough to protect about half-dozen other people as well. These larger dome-fields could be made selectively permeable at her will, so that Skids could allow her allies to enter the field on contact without weakening the protection from the rest of the field's area. Her force field can function in air, underwater, or in a vacuum.

An agile and capable unarmed combatant, Skids can also drive subway trains and is a trained operative of S.H.I.E.L.D.

RICTOR

 

RICTOR

Real Name: Julio Esteban Richter

First Appearance: X-Factor (Vol. 1) #17, June 1987

Powers: Rictor has the mutant ability to generate seismic energy. Originally, his power was solely capable of radiating intense vibrations from his body. Manipulating the intensity of these vibrations would cause anything he touched to shake, shatter, crumble, or even disintegrate if the vibrations were strong enough. They would also destabilize the ground he was walking on, often causing other people to lose their footing. If he was standing on seismically active land, Rictor could potentially create earthquakes and open tectonic plates up if his vibratory waves disturbed the crust. Later, he learned how to focus his vibrations as blasts of vibration from his hands.

Releasing his energy through his hands allows him to focus his emissions into what he calls "vibe-quakes", tightened seismic shockwaves with tremendous concussive force. These vibratory wavelengths could be mentally adjusted by Rictor to fit any different target or effect he wished to create, from blowing out a tire to collapsing entire buildings. He is immune to the harmful effects of his power. He also has at least some level of psychic attunement to geological phenomena, allowing him to “feel” the Earth beneath his feet and detect changes in the environment around him.

Rictor is a capable unarmed combatant and has a natural, but limited capacity for resistance to psychic intrusion in his mind. He has also received combat and military training from Cable and the original X-Factor. He is proficient with firearms, including automatic weapons. He is fluent in English, Spanish, and Cadre Alliance (Shatterstar's native language from Mojoworld).

BOOMER

 

BOOMER

Real Name: Tabitha Smith

First Appearance: Secret Wars II (Vol. 1) #5, November 1985

Powers: Formerly known as Boom-Boom, Boomer possesses the mutant ability to generate explosive energy. Originally, her power manifested itself as 'time bombs': Tangible spherical energy constructs. Boomer could mentally select the size, detonation time limit, and explosive power of the bomb upon creating it. Her bombs ranged from marbles to beach balls, 3 seconds to 10 seconds, and from firecracker pops to high-octane explosive discharges to duds, designed from manifestation to harmlessly dissipate. Over time, Boomer developed a more loosely packed form of her power: Plasma bombs that were less solid and more energy, exploding on contact instead of rebounding or rolling. She also adopted the use of wrist-launchers to fire her time bombs over a greater distance than she could throw them.

Upon changing her name to Meltdown, she developed a much greater control over her bombs prior to detonation: She no longer required time limits, could disperse any bomb at will, muffle the sound of the explosion, psionically levitate and direct her bombs in the air, and could create time bombs from a short distance away, whereas previously they manifested only in her hands. Her power signature greatly changed with further training, with her learning to control her explosive power after detonation, as opposed to before. She now sets off explosions in her hands and, instead of an omni-directional discharge, she focuses the explosive energy to release itself in controlled directions, creating streamers of destructive force. As it happens, Boomer is now capable of manifesting her power more like a "force blast" in addition to her time bombs. Boomer is a talented thief with covert operations training.

WIZ KID

 

WIZ KID

Real Name: Takashi Matsuya

First Appearance: X-Terminators (Vol. 1) #1, October 1988

Powers: Wiz Kid’s mutant power is techno-forming. He can psionically rearrange machinery, parts of machinery, and raw materials into various complex forms and functions of his specifications, often defying scientific logic. His power is limited only by his imagination. His power can affect metal, plastic, glass, and other synthetic or inanimate forms of matter. He can manipulate non-electronic materials, but re-configuring existing circuitry and mechanical parts is much faster for him.

Wiz Kid can make mild reconfigurations to an object, such as when he transformed a normal football helmet into a specially fitted crash helmet for his costume. He has also created machines such as a working light saber and free-flying TIE fighters out of LEGO blocks, which shoot tiny LEGO pieces instead of missiles. The Wiz Kid can create and program computer systems with his power as well.

Wiz Kid is paralyzed from the waist down and has a specially-motorized wheelchair, which he often uses as a focus for his power, re-configuring it into various vehicles to compensate for his physical disability. He often "grows" mechanical fists, laser weapons, or speed boosters on the chair, and can reconfigure it altogether into a pair of giant mechanical legs for scaling stairs. He can also transform his chair into different vehicle modes, such as a helicopter, airship, or tank and absorb excess materials into the chair in order to make it proportionately larger, accommodating extra passengers. He does require a power source in order to fuel many of his devices. He has converted a garbage can into a combustion engine, burning the trash inside it as fuel. He has also reconfigured his designs to accept Boomer's energy pellets, using their explosive power to charge up his batteries.

Wiz Kid is an inventive genius with his knowledge being purely natural, but his power gives him an innate ability to visualize and understand electronics and the basics of engineering which allow his machines to operate. He is also a genius in computer science. It's recently been confirmed that he possesses a technopathic capability as well. Wiz Kid inherently perceives and understands how components can come together as a whole, operating as a "machine" of some kind. This allows him to evaluate the function of machines psionically, diagnosing flaws in the design, and extrapolating refinements and improvements. From his time on Krakoa, he has expanded his comprehension of technology beyond the inorganic scrap materials he previously employed. Wiz Kid can technopathically intuit Krakoan bio-technology as easily as traditional machines, and has even extended his senses to the bleeding edge idea of "mutant technology" -- two or more mutants using their powers in unison to achieve greater effects. Wiz Kid's technopathy allows him to visualize mutants as components in a larger machine, and "technoform" their energy signatures to work together in more fluid and refined ways. The full potential of this aspect of his ability has not yet been explored.