GREY GARGOYLE

GREY GARGOYLE

Real Name: Paul Pierre Duval
First Appearance: Journey Into Mystery (Vol. 1) #107, August 1964

Powers: Originally a baseline human with no superhuman powers, French chemist Paul Pierre Duval was working as a lab assistant when he accidentally spilled a random chemical mixture on his right hand, transforming it into a stone-like substance. He soon discovered that this hand's touch could turn people and objects to stone, and that he could become a being of living, mobile stone by applying this power to himself. Turning to crime, Duval accumulated a fortune but soon wearied of his new wealth and set a new goal: immortality. Duval terrorized New York as the Grey Gargoyle.

The touch of Duval's right hand can transform anyone or anything into immobile, granite-like stone. By applying his hand to his own flesh, Duval can transform into living stone, fully mobile unlike his victims. His stone form is superhumanly strong (able to lift 11 tons when fully transformed) and similarly durable, far more durable than conventional stone. He has shrugged off bullets, flames and explosions with little or no damage; he can smash through steel doors; and he once formed a stone shell, which enabled him to survive the heat of reentering Earth's atmosphere from space.

Superhumanly resistant to most impacts and temperature/pressure extremes, the Grey Gargoyle apparently has little or no need for air, food or water in his stone form, and can survive for weeks or months at a time in conditions such as the ocean floor or the vacuum of space. On the rare occasions when he suffers significant physical damage in stone form, he can usually largely or completely heal himself upon reversion to human form, so long as his affected parts are restored to their proper configuration beforehand. He retains his normal human reflexes and speed in his stone-like state, and is surprisingly swift and agile despite his massive bulk. He has performed standing high-jumps of well over 20 feet, and broad jumps of well over 50 feet. He can often scale sheer walls by digging his fingers into the masonry, and he can produce sparks by striking his stone hands or fingers together like a flint.

Duval’s right hand is permanently transformed into stone, though he sometimes disguises its physical state with flesh-like gloves. Physical contact with his right hand instantly converts whatever it touches into a stone-like substance, an atom-by-atom transformation affecting both organic and inorganic matter, and even some forms of energy. The maximum volume of matter he can transform with a single touch has increased over time, and is currently well over 100 cubic feet (enabling him, for instance, to fully transform an automobile or an elevator car with a single touch); an average human being possesses a volume of 1.8 cubic feet. This transformation process is largely automatic; unless Duval consciously wills it to do otherwise, his hand will transform the maximum amount of material in contact with him whether he wishes it to do so or not. Over time, he has learned to partially restrain the effect through an act of concentration. For instance, turning only part of a person or an object to stone on contact. Without that conscious effort, his touch will instantly petrify most people or objects in their entirety.

The transformation effect can sometimes be interrupted if portions of his target are radically dissimilar to each other in terms of their physical substance, or not closely connected to each other on a material level; for instance, if he petrifies an armored man, the armor might turn to stone while the man inside remains normal. Also, materially similar substances in contact with each other (but not physically bonded) will not necessarily both be transformed it one of them comes into contact with Duval's hand. For instance, in the case of two people in contact with each other, only the one in contact with Duval would be turned to stone, since the people's two bodies are not molecularly contiguous. Some materials, usually soft, fibrous and/or thin, such as clothing, occasionally prove "transparent" to the transformation process, allowing it to occur both to the material and through the material; for instance, touching a person through their sleeve usually enables the Grey Gargoyle to transform that person in his or her entirety, though sufficiently thick outer coatings (like armor) might protect their wearer from this effect.

Duval's transformations last for about an hour, after which time the transformed people or objects revert to their normal state. Repeated touching cannot increase the amount of time a transformation lasts, though a target can always be transformed again after reverting to normal. Certain super-beings with healing factors or otherwise enhanced metabolisms may be partially resistant to Duval's touch, regaining their normal form within less than an hour. People transformed by Duval are often temporarily disoriented upon returning to normal, but otherwise unharmed. Each transformed object or person is as susceptible to damage as ordinary granite statuary while in that form, and can be smashed or otherwise broken. Duval once employed a variant of the chemical mixture that transformed him; applied to another person, this variant could turn its victim into conscious, mobile living stone like Duval himself, and Duval could mentally control that person's actions. More recently, Duval has created a special polymer coating that will sustain his transformations indefinitely when applied to the people or objects he has petrified, using this to create his "artwork", however, any breach of the polymer seal, even slight chipping, will restore the transformed person or object to normal. Duval initially required occasional applications of the original chemical that transformed him in order to sustain his stone powers, but his mutation stabilized enough years ago to make any such treatments unnecessary.

The Grey Gargoyle prevents unwanted transformations by wearing a specially treated glove that is non-conductive to his power. The glove's palm has a small opening that allows him to use his power at any time. He has sometimes demonstrated a self-proclaimed capacity for "limited flight," which may be a combination of his leaping abilities and a cape specially rigged for gliding. He often uses the objects he has transformed as projectile weapons, making even a paper airplane, for instance, potentially deadly when turned to stone and thrown with Duval's superhuman strength. An expert chemist with a master’s degree in chemistry, he has limited skill in unarmed combat.