Artie was son to a brilliant genetic scientist. Born a normal kid, his mutation triggered when he was very young, and his look changed to a weird pink-skinned thing. Then, he stopped talking and could only be understood using his power of projecting images of his thoughts. At first, they were not very precise, but he keeps improving.

From that moment, his father's only target was to revert the mutation of his child, and so he called his partner, Hank McCoy, an authority in mutations, fooling him to use him as subject of the experiment he was developing. That experiment reverted Hank to his older look: a beast of blue fur, but almost killed him. Then, Carl got murdered and Hank took the child to X Factor headquarters, were he met his best friend, Leech.

During the Inferno saga, N'Ashtir tried to kidnap them to make a sacrifice to bring demons down to earth. They escaped and founded -- with the help of the elder students -- the X-Terminators, helping in the fight against the goblins. Later, they returned to the boarding school were the first X Factor team had sent them in an attempt of giving them a 'normal' life, but somehow they got caught by the GeneNation, and were forced to help against Generation X. Fortunately, the team vanquished their foes and both kids were taken to the Massachusetts Academy, now filial to Xavier's, where they've been ever since.