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.

MAN-KILLER

 

MAN-KILLER

Real Name: Katrina Luisa Van Horn

First Appearance: Marvel Team-Up (Vol. 1) #8, January 1973 (As Man-Killer); Thunderbolts (Vol. 1) #67, September 2002 (As Amazon)

Powers: Katrina Van Horn was a German Olympic skier who was crippled and left horribly scarred during a skiing challenge against a male chauvinistic competitor. Becoming a fanatical misandrist with financial support from a wealthy militant feminist group (which itself was technologically and financially supported by the male-dominated subversive terrorist science organization known as the Advanced Idea Mechanics), Katrina underwent a physical rehabilitation program to regain her mobility and was outfitted with an exoskeleton which augmented her strength and hid her scars, she became the terrorist known as the Man-Killer.

The Man-Killer is superhumanly strong (she can lift up to 75 tons) with enhanced durability. These traits originally stemmed from her strength-enhancing exoskeleton, but the power now seems to rest in her own body. How she eliminated the need for her exoskeleton remains unknown, as does how she removed the extensive scarring that had previously disfigured her body. Shortly before and during her Ultimate Brawling League stint, she wore an armored harness, claiming it was a life-support mechanism that she could not remove, but this may have been a deception since she has not worn the harness before or since that brief period. Van Horn has some ability as an organizer and strategist, is a formidable but savage unarmed combatant, and has cultivated a certain degree of acting ability during her time spent working under various cover identities.

She is an experienced bartender. Van Horn has worn a gauntlet that generates Pym Particles, enabling her to assume gigantic size (apparently up to twenty-five feet tall), further enhancing her already superhuman strength, though this may have been a temporary ability. She formerly carried razor-edged discs that she could throw with great force and accuracy. While working with her feminist army, Man-Killer employed a flying, armored hovercraft outfitted with a powerful front-mounted battering ram and a roof-mounted energy cannon.

SUPER-ADAPTOID

 

SUPER-ADAPTOID

Real Name: Unknown

First Appearance: Tales of Suspense (Vol. 1) #82, October 1966

Powers: The Super-Adaptoid is an android constructed by scientists from the Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) using S.H.I.E.L.D. Life Model Decoy technology as a base. Created specifically as a weapon against A.I.M.'s superhuman adversaries, the Super-Adaptoid was artificialy endowed with the capacity to duplicate the abilities or superhuman powers of other beings that pass within ten feet of the scanning instruments in its eyes. The android's body is composed of "unstable molecules", artificial compounds discovered by Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, which can take on a diverse number of properties. A.I.M. developed more complex unstable molecules than Richards did and were able to incorporate self-programming psionically-triggered molecules capable of vast reorganization..

The photo-electric circuits in its eyes enable the robot to scan people and fully recorded them into its databanks. The scanning process is invisible to the naked eye and takes only a few seconds. After completion, the Adaptoid can recall its stored characteristics at any later date. It can fully reconfigure its shape to match the target of its focus, duplicate any and all superhuman abilities and fighting skills, and even manifest weapons and devices directly from its pseudo-flesh. When adapting a single individual, the Adaptoid can mimic that person perfectly, down to the fingerprints and retina patterns. When manifesting multiple active files at once, however, the Adaptoid tends to take on a green hue while shaping itself into a composite of the various appearances of its opponents. The Super-Adaptoid can maintain at least nine different recorded ability sets on active status, and has the power to combine them: for instance, he can hit as hard as Thor and Hercules combined. However, it has been proven that he will overload and short circuit if he tries to employ more than two power sets simultaneously. Even outside of its adapting power, the Super-Adaptoid is phenomenally resistant to harm. The android can have a large hole blasted through its chest, or be reduced to a liquid state by powerful acid, and can still restore its unstable molecules to a normal humanoid state. Finally, the Adaptoid apparently has the odd and never truly utilized ability to transform others into Adaptoids. By projecting electric rays from his hands, he can reconstruct a willing being into an artificial entity made of unstable molecules just as he is, and render them completely under his control.

ANNEX

 

ANNEX

Real Name: Alexander Ellis

First Appearance: The Amazing Spider-Man Annual (Vol. 1) #27, May 1993

Powers: Annex the Augmented Man is a US Army soldier originally named Alexander Ellis. He lost his lower leg during combat and later volunteered for an experimental prosthetic program. Dr. Hillman Barto had created a form of biological matter which could be transmitted and configured by technology. An amputee would don a special armored suit called the Annexing Unit and use cybernetic commands to access the configurable matter from the Bio-Regenerative Energy Well (BREW). Summoning bio-matter from the BREW over ultra-high frequency radio waves, the Annexing Unit would then mold the adaptive material into a replacement limb. However, there were several glitches:

Adarco Corporation, the A.I.M. front company that sponsored Dr. Barto, was also a weapons manufacturing plant, and blueprint files from its inventory were also available for "creation" by the Unit. While wearing the armor, Annex could use the activation phrase, "Schema Mode -- Initiate!" to generate a facsimile leg for himself and download technologies directly into his suit or hands. This downloading process was potentially dangerous, however, because he would exchange portions of his own memory and personality each time he initiated a download, robbing him of his humanity. Alex soon learned how to consciously block this psychic downloading when utilizing the suit. Annex could mentally amplify his own strength and speed by downloading exoskeletal enhancements into the armor, visually scan information into his memory banks via an optical beam, add radio equipment and bio-scanners to his helmet, summon a thrust unit onto his back for flight, generate a magnetic attractor field from the armor, reconfigure the entire suit into an immobile construct for additional protection or to use himself as a barricade, redesign the armor as firefighting equipment to protect him from smoke and flame, and access any number of items including lasers, shields, stun pistols, flame ejectors, anti-riot rubber bullets, two-way video communicators, automatic pistols, laser-guided bazookas, plasma blasters, energy-absorbing rifles, armor-piercing guns, sonic blasters, anti-aircraft missile launchers, magnetic repulsors, CO2 guns, skeleton keys, alarm nullifiers, infrared goggles, etc.

While he originally needed to store the Annexing Unit armor and manually don it, Alex later had an implant surgically placed in his body so that he could summon and displace BREW matter at will. This not only provided him with instant access to his armor whenever he needed it, it also enabled him to generate and maintain his prosthetic leg at all times as well, or materialize individual items without summoning the entire armor to do so.

Alex Ellis is a war veteran with US Army training in hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship, and weaponry.

M.O.D.O.K.

 

M.O.D.O.K.

Real Name: George Tarleton

First Appearance: Tales of Suspense (Vol. 1) #93, September 1963

Powers: George Tarleton was irradiated and artificially mutated at random by the Advanced Idea Mechanics to achieve his current state. The experiment left him with an atrophied body and a massively-disproportionate head. As M.O.D.O.K. (or M.O.D.O.C., is the Mental Organism Designed Only for Computing/Killing), he was supported by an exo-skeletal hover-chair which was his constant means of mobility and transportation. M.O.D.O.K. possessed superhuman intelligence, represented by an unlimited storage capacity for information, photographic memory, total recall, and an analytical capacity for problem solving and strategy. Though his intelligence was augmented to make him a genius many times over, he retains only an average level of creativity.

He could focus psionic energy into blasts of thermal or concussive energy, generally conducted through the focusing jewel on his headband. He could also generate psychic shocks to stun opponents into unconsciousness. M.O.D.O.K. could produce force fields around himself for protection, warding off most forms of physical assault or punishment. He was a limited telepath, and was best capable of sensing the presence and general state of mind of others, not actually reading their thoughts, and even then, his telepathy operated at a maximum range of about five miles. With additional mechanical aids, M.O.D.O.K. could both read and control thoughts to some extent.

His headband helps him focus his power and can remote control any A.I.M. or M.O.D.O.K. organization equipment, most frequently teleportation technology. He can convert himself into raw data and travel in the form of an e-mail.