If your knowledge of super hero comic books is limited to what you've seen at the movies, then you've never heard of the Grey Gargoyle. And your life is probably the better for it. The Grey Gargoyle is a middling Marvel Comics villain with the "uncanny" ability to turn anything he touches into stone. For an hour. Unless it's magical. (Which would make his foe of choice, Thor, a piss-poor choice for a nemesis. But then, the Grey Gargoyle is a piss-poor villain.)

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It's no wonder the guy has an identity crisis. (There's a reason he always uses the word "the" before his name even though no one else would be caught dead impersonating a loser like him.) The Grey Gargoyle is French, so he'd probably refer to himself as "Le Gargouille Grise." However, Gargoyle spends almost all of his time in American comic books fighting American heroes, where you'd expect that he'd be referenced as "The Gray Gargoyle." But for some reason he inexplicably prefers the Queen's English to American. Usually.

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Like I said, the guy has an identity crisis. Even the writers and editors at Marvel Comics apparently don't care enough to consistently get his name right. They can't even keep his name straight for an entire issue. Sometimes they don't even try at all. (And why should they? I don't think the schmuck has ever won a fight. In the comic above right, he is defeated when the loose end of a chain accidentally gets wrapped around his foot. Unfortunately for him, the chain was attached to a rocket. What fool would wrap a chain around a rocket in the first place? He did. Fail to plan, plan to fail.)

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And when they do get it right, they tend to over-compensate a bit. His name appears on the cover above twice. In all caps. And he's shown holding his own against the entire Avenger's team! If you've never seen him before, you'd be thinking that he must be a bad-ass, right? That is, until you learn that he's French.

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While it's one thing to disrespect a villain enough to forget his name, it's another thing entirely to forget his powers. Notice on that cover above left, it looks like Gargoyle is turning someone to stone, yes? That's his power, right? Turns out, no, not when he's using the wrong hand, it isn't. Gargoyle is only able to turn someone to stone with his right hand, not his left. And last time I checked, things made of granite fly about as well as a..., well, as well as a stone.

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He wears blue socks with claws, a cape made of stone, and has a pencil mustache. Once you get to know him, you begin to understand why a man made of stone would wear a domino mask to hide his identity. The more you learn about this guy, the more you suspect that Darwin was full of shit: "natural selection" would never let something this retarded live long enough to learn to learn to walk. Ah, but the world of super villains needs janitors, too. Therefore, I present to you... The Gray Grey Gargoyle!

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