Gargoyle (comics)

Gargoyle is a name shared by two fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The first Gargoyle, Yuri Topolov, appears in The Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962), and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The appearance of Gargoyle in Rampaging Hulk #1 is merely part of one of Bereet's fictional techno-art films. The first Gargoyle received an entry in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #17, where his real name was revealed. The second Gargoyle, Isaac Christians, is a human/demon hybrid and a member of the Defenders. He was created by writer J. M. DeMatteis and artist Don Perlin. Perlin's design was inspired by a sequence in Prince Valiant in which the titular hero disguises himself as a gargoyle. During his long run on The Defenders, Gargoyle also was the co-star of Marvel Team-Up #119, written by his co-creator DeMatteis, who later described the issue as "one of my favorite favorite stories". In 1985 Marvel published a four-issue Gargoyle limited series, written by DeMatteis and drawn by Mark Badger. DeMatteis said of the series, "It was a psychological fantasy. You take the interior life and make it concrete... give it substance... and play with it". Explaining why he decided to do a limited series starring Gargoyle, he said, I'd always wanted to do that character the right way. We'd had him in Defenders for years and Don Perlin and I were... We came to like him so much, as a person... this was a classic case of the character coming alive for us. We came to like Isaac Christians, this little old man inside the Gargoyle's body, so much that it began to mellow out the way we portrayed the outer shell, the gargoyle aspect. And, before you know it, he's this cute little funny animal. Which he was never intended to be. In a 2013 interview DeMatteis said that Gargoyle "is a character I still have tremendous fondness for". Yuri Topolov is a Soviet scientist and the Hulk's first foe. An atomic accident caused from working with radiation that mutated him into a grotesque large-headed dwarf.