Grey Gargoyle

Paul Pierre Duval, a young chemist working for a pharmaceutical company in Paris, accidentally spilled a potion contaminated by some unknown organic substance on his right hand. To his dismay, his hand began to turn to stone-like material still capable of movement. Accidentally touching his other hand, he found that he could transform his entire body into the stone-like material. He also discovered that any matter he touched also turned to stone. Mercenary by nature, Duval decided to exploit his bizarre power for personal profit and turned to theft, quickly becoming one of France’s most accomplished criminals as the Grey Gargoyle.

The Grey Gargoyle, bored with lack of challenge to his crimes, decided to travel to America and wrest the secret of immortality from Thor. He was twice bested in combat by him before returning to what had proved more successful in the past-- pure mercenary endeavors. His first attempt was to steal a new cobalt-powered weapon from Stark Industries, and he was actually successful after transforming Iron Man’s battle armor to stone. Iron Man returned when the Gargoyle’s power wore off, stopping the villain by destroying the machinery he hoped to abscond with. Later, an attempted to acquire the deadly compound dubbed "Element X" went horribly wrong. He was confronted by Captain America, the Falcon, and Nick Fury, cornered, and accidentally shot into space.

The Gargoyle found himself trapped aboard a satellite in Earth’s orbit, where the subversive scientific organization Advanced Idea Mechanics rescued him. On their behalf, he joined their efforts to launch a satellite with heavy weaponry, fighting Captain America and Spider-Man, but was accidentally rocketed into space once more. In deep space, he was retrieved by the Bird of Prey, a pirate starship whose crew members were of various alien races. Ever out for himself, the Grey Gargoyle forced himself into command of the ship.

The Bird of Prey encountered the starship StarJammer, used by Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three in their adventure to the Doomsday Star. The Gargoyle had the heroes captured and conscripted to join the crew for slave labor. The heroes’ ally, the Recorder, not only helped his friends escape but started a mutiny among the crew against the Grey Gargoyle. When the rebellion grew out of control, the Grey Gargoyle professed to want to join Thor in order to return to Earth. However, at the height of the battle, the Gargoyle tried to flee and seemed to have died in a violent explosion.

\In fact, Duval survived by created a stone-like cocoon around himself. Using the cocoon to travel through space, he managed to return to Earth, where he immediately battled the Avengers. In the process, his cocoon was destroyed, and he was taken into police custody. Duval was soon freed by villains of the fourth Masters of Evil organization, whose goal was to destroy the Avengers, but following a defeat at the hands of the Wasp and Black Knight, he was again returned to jail.

Kree

The Kree is an extraterrestrial humanoid race who have created a vast empire in the Greater Magellanic Cloud and have, on certain occasions, trafficked with the beings of Earth. The Kree race began on the planet Hala in the Pama system long before the first mammals appeared on Earth. The original Kree had blue-colored skin (later generations interbred with genetically-compatible aliens to produce the pink-skinned second race). Outwardly humanoid to a large degree, Kree bodies are adapted to environmental characteristics on Hala that are un-Earth-like: notably, higher gravity and higher nitrogen content in the atmosphere. Although the Kree cannot breathe Earth’s atmosphere without special apparatus, their denser bodies afford them about twice the average human being’s strength and endurance. Despite their physical superiority and relatively advanced technology, the Kree race has reached the pinnacle of their evolutionary development.

The Kree Empire extends across thousand worlds in the northwestern lobe (Earth reference) of the Greater Magellanic Cloud. The Kree began their empire over a million years ago, within 100 years of acquisition of interstellar technology from then-benevolent race of Skrulls. The Skrulls at the time were attempting to foster a galactic empire based on free trade, and they landed on Hala to help the barbaric natives advance to the point where they could join. Finding that Hala boasted two equally intelligent life forms, the humanoid Kree and plant-like Cotati, the Skrulls proposed a test to determine the worthier race. Enraged that the Skrulls chose the Cotati as superior, the Kree slew the Skrull ambassador and seized the starship and its attendant technology. Mastering it within two generations, the Kree began to attack the Skrulls, thus beginning their now eons-old Kree-Skrull War.

Though Hala is the planet of the Kree’s origin, the planet Kree-Lar in the Turunal system is the capital of the Kree Empire as well as the seat of the government. The Kree Empire is ruled as a militaristic dictatorship. The permanent ruler is the organic computer-construct called the Supreme Intelligence, an immense computer system to which the preserved brains of the greatest intellects of the Kree race have been linked. Aiding the Supreme Intelligence is a number if imperial administrators on Kree-Lar, appointed governors of each of the member-worlds, and a vast standing space militia. The Empire also employs powerful automatons called Sentries to keep member-worlds under surveillance, such as Sentry 459, which guarded an outpost on Earth before the Fantastic Four stumbled upon it and inadvertently destroyed the island and its guardian.

Although Earth is in a different galaxy from the Kree Empire, the Kree have become aware of the small planet and have frequented it and its solar system over eons. The Kree first learned of Earth from the Skrulls who deposited them and the Cotati on Earth’s moon for the test of worthiness (the Kree built a city in the Blue Area of the Moon). Once the Kree-Skrull War began, the Kree deposited a Sentry and a weapon depot on the planet Uranus, hoping to maintain a strategic site near one of the Skrulls’ known intergalactic space-wrap routing access-points. When the human race began the Kree learned of the vast genetic potential in the Earth’s dominant life form, and created an evolutionary-accelerated tribe of humanity called the Inhumans. Despite frequent surveillance, the official policy of the Kree government is that Earth is minor, limited-potential planet of little importance. The upper echelons are aware of the truth, however: not only is Earth is a strategic military position, but its denizens possesses the genetic potential to be a serious threat to the already-decaying Kree Empire and race.