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| “ | Everyone has a problem with women…because women taunt and tease! Because they are attractive and then they punish you for being attracted! Do you deny it? After all, I’m not the one who wears underwear outside her clothes! | „ |
| ~ Mr. Gone |
Artemus Pender, better known as Mr. Gone, is the main antagonist of Sam Kieth and William Messner-Loebs' comic book series and the MTV animated series The Maxx.
He was voiced by the late Barry Stigler in the animated series.
Quick Answers
How does Mr. Gone control the Isz in 'The Maxx'?
What abilities does Mr. Gone possess in 'The Maxx' series?
Who voiced Mr. Gone in the animated series 'The Maxx'?
What is Mr. Gone's real name in 'The Maxx'?
History[]
Mister Gone is introduced as a serial rapist of young women who can assume other forms, and can also enter and control "the Outback," an alternate dimension that resembles prehistoric Australia. The Isz, the Outback's main predators, serve as his henchmen.
Mr. Gone is a family friend of one of the series' protagonists, Julie Winters; he was a friend of her father's who, as a child, she called "Uncle Artie".
When Julie was in college, Mr. Gone used his shapeshifting powers to assume the form of a hitchhiker and attack and rape Julie. She spent months in a state of traumatized depression, only to snapped out of it when she accidentally struck a homeless man with her car. Mr. Gone saved the man's life and gave him the power to see and enter the Outback. Years later, the man, now claiming to be a superhero called the Maxx, befriends Julie, who does not know he is the same man she thought she had killed.
Years later, he kidnaps Julie in his real form. He begins to tell her the truth about who he is, but she overpowers and beheads him before he can tell her the whole story. His spirit survives, however, and he takes a number of different forms to plague Maxx and Julie. He also encounters a teenage girl named Sarah, who is later revealed to be his daughter. When the police get too close, he has the Isz kidnap a surgeon to sew his head back on to his body, and then disappears.
Years later, Sarah goes to visit Mr. Gone, who is now married and using his real name. He claims that he has repented of his crimes and wants to be a part of her life, but Sarah angrily rejects him.
She later finds a series of audio tapes Mr. Gone left her. The tapes reveal his tragic backstory: he was sexually abused as a child by his aunt and a male babysitter and grew up to hate and fear women. As an adult, he married a drug addict who eventually killed their son before dying of an overdose. This awakened his anger and hatred, and he married again so he could have someone to degrade and abuse. After his second wife left him, he married a much younger woman and had a child - Sarah, to whom he was a loving father. Eventually, however, his inner darkness resurfaced and he began having nightmares about hurting his new family. Frightened, his wife left and took Sarah, and he committed suicide. Because of his connection to the Outback, however, he was immediately returned to life, leaving him trapped in a life he believed was not worth living. Determined to inflict his pain on the entire world, he became a serial rapist and used his powers to hurt others the way he had been hurt. When he encountered Sarah, however, it reawakened his conscience and he dedicated his life to making amends to his victims and reconnecting with his daughter.
Mr. Gone uses his powers to open a dimensional wormhole that would allow him, Julie, Sarah, and Maxx to begin anew in different lives, with no memory of what had happened before. Before Mr. Gone can enter, however, a group of FBI agents who had been trailing him for years burst in and shoot him dead. His spirit once again survives, however, and divides into two separate beings: a college professor in an alternate universe who befriends the alternate version of Maxx, a janitor; and his spiritual self, who lives happily ever after with Sarah in the Outback.