Iggy

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**Iggy** (real name **James Griffiths**) is a "bird kid" around the same age as Max and Fang. He is also a member of the Flock and is considered one of the main characters in the series, as he appears in every book.

## History

### Before *The Angel Experiment*

James Griffiths was born to Tom Griffiths and an unnamed mother, though he was taken by the School sometime after. (The exact time is unknown due to inconsistencies throughout *The Angel Experiment* and *School's Out - Forever*.)

Several years before Jeb Batchelder and the Flock escaped, whitecoats at the School performed an operation on Iggy that was meant stimulate a certain area of rods and cones in the back of his eyes, increasing his night vision capabilities by at least four hundred percent. He was awake during the entire operation, as revealed in *Nevermore*, and in the end, he was permanently blinded by it.

When he was around ten years old, the entire Flock escaped to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Colorado along with Jeb.

### *The Angel Experiment*

File:Iggy flopping onto the couch.pngIggy first appears shortly before breakfast the day of Angel's kidnapping, after he flops onto the Flock's beat-up couch "with perfect aim". Max tells him to wake up, and he responds by sleepily mumbling for her to bite him.

After Gazzy passes gas during breakfast, Iggy chokes out a request for a gas mask and pretends to asphyxiate. Following breakfast, the entire Flock goes outside to pick strawberries per Angel's wishes. Max offers to make strawberry shortcakes, but Iggy says he'll make them instead, causing her to whirl around and have Gazzy throw her voice. Iggy laughs at the incident along with the rest of the Flock, holding his hands up in denial, but the Erasers arrive soon afterwards. He lasts for some time during the battle—sustaining eye injuries and a split lip in the process—but eventually is knocked unconscious.

When he and the Flock wake up, Angel is missing. Max asks if anyone is up for a chase, to which Iggy says he's up. Soon after, he cocks his head slightly and points, having heard the engine of the Erasers' Humvee. He and the Flock then take off to get Angel. During the chase, an Eraser throws a grenade at him and Nudge, though they manage to dodge it. In the end, however, the Flock is unable to rescue Angel.

 File:Iggy screaming at Gazzy and Nudge.png  Once back at their home, Iggy howls and sweeps his hand across the counter, causing a mug to catapult through the air and hit Fang in the side of the head. Fang yells for him to watch it, then clenches his teeth and rolls his eyes at Max in frustration. In response, Iggy shouts for Fang to watch it as well. Iggy then goes and sits down on the couch next to Nudge, who puts her head on his shoulder as he strokes her hair.

As Fang eats ravioli, he says that the Flock knows where the Erasers took Angel. Iggy raises his head and asks where, and Fang responds with the answer: the School. The answer causes Iggy's spine to tighten as Max remembers the operation the whitecoats performed on him that rendered him blind.

When Nudge demands to know if they can tell on the whitecoats for their cruelty, Iggy says that it would fix them but—at the same time—cause the Flock to end up in a zoo. Soon after, Fang returns with maps of the School; when Max tells everyone else what they are, Iggy goes very pale. He asks if they can discuss it, saying the Flock was outnumbered, though Max says no. He tries again by asking if they can take a vote, but Max responds by saying that it is not a democracy and by telling him that she needs him and the Gasman to stay and hold down the fort.

After a moment of dead silence, Iggy says Max is "so full of it" and turns toward her, saying that isn't why she wanted them there and asking her to just say it. Remembering Angel, Max tells Iggy that she doesn't want him to come because of his blindness. His face twists in anger and he opens his mouth, but he gets cut off by Gazzy asking about himself. After Max explains her reasons, Iggy tells her that Jeb never would have made them stay.

Some time after the rest of the Flock leaves, Iggy punches a door frame and tells Gazzy they should throw all their stuff into the canyon. Gazzy scowls at his remarks, saying he can't believe he has to stay home, then kicks a worn red sneaker against the kitchen island. After eating a handful of cereal and throwing the box against the wall, he shouts that their situation stinks, and Iggy sarcastically asks him if that had just occurred to him. Gazzy tells him to shut up, causing him to raise his eyebrows in surprise. His face also stiffens after Gazzy says Max left them because she thought they couldn't keep up.

Gazzy asks Iggy if Max had been thinking about what would happen if the Erasers came back, to which Iggy thoughtfully responds by saying it would be hard to find the place. The younger member then reminds him that the Erasers have a chopper and tells him that, despite what Max may think, they're not useless. Coming to sit next to Gazzy at the counter, Iggy says he sees what he means.

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The two then transition to a conversation about how to keep the "camp" safe. When Gazzy mentions bombs, Iggy says that bombs are good and that he loves them. He also asks Gazzy if he remembers one from last fall that almost caused an avalanche. Gazzy tells him that there was a reason for it—"Max approved it."—and begins pawing through piles of stuff until he finds a memo pad and a pencil. He asks what their objectives are; groaning, Iggy tells him he's starting to sound like Max. Gazzy then frowns at him and begins writing.

Later on, Gazzy and Iggy begin building an explosive. The former asks if they have any chlorine, to which Iggy frowns and says no. He then asks what color one of the wires is, and Gazzy tells him yellow. Iggy tells him to keep track of it and not confuse it with the red one. Gazzy mutters okay and flips through pages, saying that next they need a timing device; Iggy smiles at that and, after Gazzy says it's an evil grin, tells him to go get Max's Mickey Mouse alarm clock.

By that night, they have managed to complete the explosive, which they call Big Boy. Iggy goes through the list of things they need—carefulness, nails, tarp, and cooking oil—and Gazzy confirms they have them all by telling him, "Check." They then briefly discuss their plan before taking off.

As Iggy assembles a trap in the woods some time after, Gazzy asks if "that wire will hold". Iggy nods and continues twisting two cables together before pinching them shut with a cable clamp. The two of them then head west, back to their house.

In the morning, Iggy and Gazzy perch themselves near the top of a pine overlooking an abandoned logging road to watch their plan unfold. They converse briefly before the Erasers' Hummer hits their trap, causing it to wreck. Gazzy calls it incredible, causing Iggy to irritably say he has two seconds to give him the picture; afterwards, Iggy punches the air with a "Yes!" and asks about signs of life. When told that there were some, he asks if there is any point in dropping Big Boy on the Erasers, but after Gazzy tells him he doesn't think so, Iggy says they need to regroup and come up with Phase Two. The two of them head to an old cabin shortly after to do so.

### *School's Out - Forever*

At the beginning of the novel, Iggy and the rest of the Flock are flying to Washington DC when they are attacked by flying Erasers. During the battle, Iggy manages to shove an explosive down the shirt of one of the Erasers, which detonates and leaves a gaping hole in the Eraser's chest. He also sustains a nosebleed, though he calls it "no biggie" after the Flock emerges triumphant and Max asks for a report.

A few minutes after getting back on their flight path, Iggy asks what was with the flying Erasers, to which Max responds by guessing that they were a new prototype. This sparks a short discussion among the rest of the Flock.

A while later, Fang begins to lose altitude "*really* fast" shortly after Max notices his battle injuries; panicking, Max calls on Iggy to help her support him. The Flock then flies to a narrow rocky shore edging the ocean to check out the damage. After arriving, Iggy feels Fang's skin and tells Max that the injury feels real bad. He also elevates Fang's feet after Max tells him to do so per instructions from the Voice.

At the hospital, Max temporarily leaves Iggy in charge while she goes to talk to the doctors. When interrogated, Iggy gives his name as Jeff and claims that he became blind from looking directly at the sun. He donates blood to Fang. At Anne’s house, they wander around to give Iggy some landmarks. Later, as they go through the files stolen from the School, Fang and Iggy work together, with Fang reading out the codes and Iggy listening for patterns. Max and Iggy cook large breakfasts after learning that Anne Walker’s breakfasts are usually protein bars and sports drinks.

When searching for their parents goes badly, Nudge and the others take it well, but Iggy shouts, “This sucks!” and punches a telephone pole, hurting his hand. He says that he needs answers, they need to find where they belong, and they can’t keep living on the run, and begins to cry. He pushes Max away when she tries to hug him, but admits just how scared and vulnerable he is because of his blindness. The Gasman tries to comfort him, saying, “We’re your eyes,” but Iggy begins shouting again about his fears of losing the Flock. In his anger he breaks a store window with a rock, setting off an alarm. The Flock starts to flee but Iggy gives up and sits down to wait for the police. Max convinces him to come with them because she needs her family whole, and flies close to him on the way home, reassuring him that they’re a family.

The next day, he seems better, but seems humiliated when Anne tells him that he and Fang will be in the same class to help him “get [his] bearings.” On their first day at school, someone pins a “kick me” sign to Iggy’s back, and a frustrated Iggy and Gazzy set off a stink bomb and end up in the principal’s office. As they fly home, Iggy sarcastically tells Max that they’ll be more “stupid and idiotic in the future” and blend in.

During the trip to the White House, Iggy is befriended by a classmate, Tess. When Max sees him in the gift shop, he seems to be enjoying himself.

Later, Gazzy and Iggy, who is still thinking about Tess, enter the School’s basement and find a hidden file room. Gaze's carrying a bomb and Iggy orders him to set it off so they can escape. They behave better in school, but later return to the file room and find more information on the real history of the school.

After Thanksgiving, Max and Fang take him to meet his parents, and he stays with them.

 File:Iggy and mother ultimate flight.jpg
He returns after the Flock runs away from Anne Walker. He makes “a wry Iggy-face” that Max interprets as happiness, but their reunion is soured by the fact that Iggy’s parents tried to use him for media attention. He is deeply bitter about this. He also mentions that he missed the Flock too much, even before his parents showed their true colors.

While flying, Gazzy knocks Iggy off balance as part of a game, but Iggy drops Total. In the aftermath of finding his parents, Max notes that Iggy seems to be feeling okay. While at Disney World, Iggy wears sunglasses and Total poses as his guide dog. Later, Max II is confused by Iggy’s ability to cook, and concludes that he is otherwise deadweight.

In the Itex building, while Nudge and Max II are on the computer, Iggy and Gazzy work on a bomb beneath a desk. Iggy senses someone
approaching right before Ari crashes through the door. Gazzy later detonates the bomb to help them escape and Iggy rates it a solid 10 for sonic blast alone. Having escaped, they fly south and camp in the Everglades; Iggy, Total, and the younger kids immediately fall asleep.

### *Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports*

At the football game, he and Max are the only ones who seem tense. He is surrounded by unfamiliar sounds.

At the School, Iggy tells Roland ter Borcht that he has a highly developed sense of irony. After their escape, Iggy goes with Fang and Gazzy to California. Iggy asks Fang to describe the local girls to him. The boys then have to fight off Flyboys and destroy the Hollywood sign; one of Iggy's bombs scatters pieces of fifty robots over a beach party.

### *The Final Warning*

While the Flock is eating pizza, Iggy unthinkingly mentions that his cup is blue, cueing the realization that he can sense colors by touch. Later, in Antarctica, he discovers that he can see the color white.

### *MAX*

In the past year, both Iggy and Fang have grown taller than Max. After Fang and Max develop gills, he, Nudge and Gazzy test to see whether they have gills as well, but they do not. While on the Navy sub, Iggy and Gazzy develop a plan and weapon to fight off the M-Geeks.

### *FANG*

When the Flock visits an art museum, Iggy and Gazzy go to the abstract section, where Iggy can sense the colors and Gazzy can explain what he thinks the painting represents. Afterwards, Iggy says that he has learned he wants to see.

### *ANGEL*

Along with Ella, Iggy is brainwashed by the Doomsday Group. Other cult members idolize him and admire his wings. The Flock kidnaps him and deprograms him with the aid of a cold shower and Angel's telepathic powers. After recovering, he helps them rescue Ella and distracts the cult members.

### *Nevermore*

At school, Iggy teases the popular girls by pretending to think that it's a school for the blind. He also joins the soccer team.

He hears the Voice speaking and has apparently heard it before.

Iggy is reunited with Ella on Paradise and shares a kiss with her. He accompanies the other mutants into the underground caves.

### *Maximum Ride Forever*

Some months later, Iggy is with the rest of the Flock on the surface of the island. When they split up, he and Gazzy fly off to Pennsylvania to search for survivors and encounter the silo girls. They are put to work cleaning out sewage and are then attacked by the Horseman. Iggy escapes the exploding silo and leads the Horseman on a chase through the woods, but is eventually hunted down.

When the Flock is reunited in Russia, he is revealed to have survived.

## Appearance

 File:Marvel iggy.png  He is approximately 6'2", and has (sightless) ice blue eyes, pale skin, and strawberry blonde hair. Like the other Flock members, it's believed their wings are based on the design of hawks, but in *School's Out - Forever*, in Angel's point-of-view, "Iggy was a big white seabird, like an albatross or something."

## Abilities

### Synesthesia

In an early conflict, one of the Erasers said that if the Flock had not escaped when they did, the whitecoats would have replaced Iggy's eyes with computerized ones. However, Iggy's self-mutation, found in *The Final Warning*, turns out to be an ability to see colors by touching them. He can also "see" whiteness (and it is mentioned that he is able to identify the Flock by their fingerprints or the feel of their feathers or skin).

### Sensory abilities

Despite his lack of sight, he uses the other senses to make up for it. His navigation skills and coordination is sometimes even more superior than the rest of the Flock. For another example, he had no problem being blind at the Flock's old house unless someone moved the furniture.

Max feels comfortable and safer when Iggy looks out when they camp out during book two because "a cockroach couldn't go within 50 feet from them without Iggy knowing about it."

### Making explosives

He is also a master at making bombs. He and Gazzy usually act as a team when working with explosives, with Iggy using his hearing to locate a target and Gazzy acting as the eyes.

In *The Angel Experiment*, they set off two bombs in order to get away from the Erasers, but it cost them their home. Also, in *School's Out - Forever*, they set off a stink bomb in a regular school while staying with Anne Walker.)

### Cooking

When it comes to cooking, Iggy is the chef and is able to cook fairly well under most conditions. He cooks breakfast at the beginning of *The Angel Experiment* because he doesn't want Max to burn their last frying pan.

## Personality

In *Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports*, Iggy mockingly replied that he has a "highly developed sense of irony" when questioned on what abilities he possessed by Dr. Roland ter Borcht. This has proven true in most of the other books, though many of his ironic jokes pertain to his lack of sight.

Iggy adores explosives, fire, and anything that blows up. He also likes to cook.

Despite his constant jokes about being blind, he is quite emotionally distraught about losing his sight at times. In *School's Out - Forever*, after following yet another hopeless lead to find the flock's parents, Iggy breaks down, saying the rest of the flock didn't understand, and that "[their] lost wasn't as bad as [his] lost." Max convinces him to stay with them by saying that she would feel incomplete without him—or without any of them.

Another time, in *FANG*, Iggy said that he learned he wanted to see after touring an art museum.

During *Nevermore*, Angel is forced to watch a film of his surgery. Iggy never reveals how painful it was for him to anyone in the series.

## Relationships

### Max

Unlike Fang, Iggy never seemed to truly quarrel with Max. He cares about her deeply, and vice versa. Also, in *ANGEL*, when Ella talked to Max about how she had a crush on Iggy, Max felt strange, as if hearing Ella talking about having a crush on her son.

### Fang

 File:Fang and iggy.jpg  When the Flock was staying at the hospital in *School's Out - Forever*, Fang called Iggy "Figgy" after he asked to change the channel on the television.

### Nudge

Not much true interaction between Nudge and Iggy has occurred besides brotherly and sisterly ways between them, one example being how they partnered up at the wedding at the end of *FANG*. Another example would be in *The Angel Experiment*; when Angel was captured, the Flock had gone back to the house, feeling empty, and Iggy let Nudge put her head on his shoulder, and he stroked her hair. Yet another example is in *School's Out - Forever*, when Nudge and Iggy were walking down the beach and Nudge was putting different shells in Iggy's hands so he could feel them. In MAX, when Nudge left to live a normal life, Iggy had confessed that he actually missed Nudge's "run-on mouth" and brownness.

### Gazzy

 File:Iggy and gazzy.jpg  Gazzy is described in the book as being Iggy's best friend and partner in crime. They liked to make bombs, play video games, and partner up with each other in various activities. Gazzy was mostly the one that describes stuff to him and even gave him "vision lessons."

In *MAX*, when Gazzy and Iggy saved the day by destroying the M-Geeks that had surrounded the sub, everyone broke down with laughter as they called their torpedo explosive the "Gaz-Ig-Nart technique."

### Angel

There is no clear affection between Iggy and Angel, but in *The Final Warning*, Iggy had popped back Angel's arm in place when Gozen had snapped it.

### Ella Martinez

Ella had a crush on Iggy. At the end of the third book, when the flock members unite and go to Dr. Martinez's—Max's mom's—house, where he tends to be very shy around her. Although it was not clearly stated whether or not Iggy had a crush on her, they interacted quite a bit in *ANGEL*, such as at the campfire in a desert where Iggy calmed her down when she discovered her mother was missing. Also, Iggy and Ella shared a kiss in public when they were reunited in *Nevermore*.

### Tess

In *School's Out - Forever*, Iggy met Tess. It was mentioned quite a few times that he felt like a blind idiot when he was around her. She was described as tall, like him, and that was why she talked with him. She once told Iggy they matched because they're the same height.

### Parents

The Flock helped Iggy find his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, after seeing them interviewed on TV. After talking to them, the Flock learned that Iggy's real name is James Griffiths and that he was kidnapped by the School and was gone without a trace. They confirmed his identity by showing his birthmark—a small red mark on his back, on his left side. After briefly leaving the Flock to live with his parents, he returned to his friends and explained that his parents wanted to make money out of his mutations. This furthered the Flock's fears about what their parents would think of them.

## Trivia

* In *MAX*, Iggy and the Gasman both agree that they want to be action figures. Iggy wants to be called the "White Knight" because of his pale looks.
* He has also gone by the name Jeff.
* Although his hair is usually described as reddish-blond, in Nevermore, Angel sees a video of the operation which blinded him. In this video his hair is "pale, almost white."
* Iggy has two different distinctive identifying features. *School's Out - Forever* describes a small red birthmark on his back, and in *Nevermore* Angel identifies a video of him by three freckles on his neck.
* He is featured on the third volume of the Maximum Ride manga by NaRae Lee.

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