GREGORY GIDEON

Real Name: Gregory Hungerford Gideon

Identity/Class: Human technology user

Occupation: Industrialist

Group Membership: None

Affiliations: Dragon Man, Smedley, Wally, Andrew "Slugger" Johnson (underlings)

Enemies: Fantastic Four (Human Torch/Johnny Storm, Invisible Girl/Susan Richards, Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards, Thing/Ben Grimm), Medusa/Medusalith Amaquelin, Menace

Known Relatives: Claire Gideon (wife, deceased), Thomas Gideon (son)

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: New York City, New York

First Appearance: Fantastic Four I#34 (January, 1965)

Powers/Abilities: Originally, Gregory Gideon had no superhuman powers; but because of his enormous and near-limitless wealth, he believed he could buy, sell, control, or destroy anyone and anything. He also had access to hired lackeys, advanced technology, and exotic weaponry.

Later, after exposure to the radiation of a nuclear blast, he was left in weakened condition that forced him to wear a life-supporting "biological shell"; while enhanced by his energy-sapping Eternity Machine, he temporarily gained superhuman strength comparable to that of the Thing.

Height: 5'11"
Weight: 175 lbs.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Bald

History:
(Fantastic Four I#34 (fb) - BTS) - Multi-billionaire Gregory Hungerford Gideon was a prominent industrialist, and one of the wealthiest men in the world. At some point, he married Claire and fathered Thomas; but he neglected his wife and son while he obsessively built his financial empire.

(Untold Tales of Spider-Man#21 - BTS) - The Gideon Museum of the Arts in Fort Lee, New Jersey, was robbed by Menace, one of several criminals claiming to be an evil mutant.

(Fantastic Four I#34) - From his stadium-sized office, Gideon met via teleconference with his international rivals Van Vroot, Tamiroff, and Favorsham. Gideon declared that he would drive the three of them out of business within three years and take over financial mastery of the entire world. But lacking the patience to wait ("I want to own EVERYTHING... and I want it NOW!!"), Gideon proposed that any challenge they presented him with, he would attempt to succeed at--if he won, they would sell their businesses to him; if he failed, he would give up his plans for world domination. The three men agreed and demanded that Gideon attempt to defeat the Fantastic Four in one week.

   Gideon set out to turn the Fantastic Four against each other; he had one of his lackeys forge the Thing's signature on an order allowing his men to take Ben Grimm's share of the Fantastic Four's equipment, including their Pogo Plane, which infuriated Mr. Fantastic. They also set up a phony space ship found by the police which contained false information about a Skrull spy impersonating Mr. Fantastic. These actions turned the Thing and Mr. Fantastic against each other.

   Similarly, he turned the Human Torch and Invisible Girl against each other by making the Invisible Girl believe that a robot built by Dr. Doom was impersonating the Human Torch; consequently, when the Torch was attacked by his own sister, he assumed she was under the control of the Puppet Master.

   It cost a million dollars for Gideon to carry out this plan, but he considered it well-spent, because his strategy of dividing and conquering the team was working. But Gideon's wife and son were overwrought by his paying more attention to his business instead of them. His son, Thomas, was a fan of the Fantastic Four, and overheard Gideon planning his idols' defeat. Thomas ran to warn the Fantastic Four not to step into his father's trap at the Baxter Building, where a replica of Dr. Doom's Time Machine that Gideon had built had been installed, but the heroes were too busy battling each other and ignored Thomas.

   As the Thing smashed into the Baxter Building, he landed upon the Time Machine platform at the same time as Thomas, and both of them then disappeared into the past! The remaining members of the Fantastic Four broke up Gideon's men, then faced Gideon himself. Gideon was despondent over his son's fate, and he promised Mr. Fantastic any amount of money if he would save his son. Fortunately, Mr. Fantastic had turned the Time Machine off before it could complete its task, and the Thing and Thomas were brought back to the present. Having finally realized how important his family was to him, Gideon vowed to give his money to charity and renounced his dreams of world conquest. Now considering his wife and son his greatest treasures, Gideon vowed to make amends for the way he had neglected them.

(Fantastic Four I#34 - BTS) - Despite his plot against them, the Fantastic Four apparently felt sympathy for the reunited family, and they didn't file any charges against Gideon with the authorities.

(Fantastic Four I#135 (fb), Fantastic Four I#136 (fb) - BTS) - Gideon embarked on a vacation with Claire and Thomas; after this trip, Gideon intended to renounce his wealth and undo his financial empire. But sadly, Gideon's private aircraft blundered into a U.N. nuclear testing site. The aircraft was destroyed, and only Gregory and Thomas survived; they were found by a Russian trawler, and three of the trawler's crew died due to radiation from the "safe-bomb" test. Gregory and Thomas were hospitalized in the U.S.

   From his doctors, Gregory learned he had only two years to live, though Thomas would live a little longer. Shocked, Gideon set out to find a cure; however, nothing worked, and his body's very atomic structure was collapsing. Gideon took to wearing a "biological shell" to survive and slipped into a grave depression. However, seeing the Fantastic Four on Time magazine's cover as "People of the Year" inspired Gideon--surmising that their genes and those of Franklin Richards, which gave them cosmic-ray powered abilities, could be studied to find the power to undo the damage to his own cells, Gideon started to plan. He put an advertisement in the Daily Bugle to recruit cronies, one of whom ended up being "Slugger" Johnson (see comments). Gideon sent his men to retrieve the Dragon Man from a refrigerated railroad freight car that the Sub-Mariner had trapped it in (@ Sub-Mariner I#15), as Gideon knew that the giant android's odd psychological attachment to Sue Richards could help his plans.

   Gideon's men melted a path in the ice surrounding the Dragon Man and placed a device in its head to allow Gideon to master it with a sonic control. Gideon had the Dragon Man revived, and it followed Gideon's men obediently to a Gideon-owned research center.

(Fantastic Four I#134) - Gideon observed the Fantastic Four with a spying "multi-lensed flying eye" that quietly floated after them. Pushing a button, Gideon activated a weapon that struck the FF's Fantasticar; they were downed, but survived the crash. Thomas entered Gideon's control room, but Gregory chided his son for interrupting him. Gregory proceeded to a contingency plan.

   Sue Richards was, at this time, away with her son Franklin on a Pennsylvania farm. Gideon sent the Dragon Man to acquire them; it did so and took them to Gideon's base of operations. Elsewhere, Johnny Storm went to the home of his old girlfriend, Doris Evans, where another flying eye attacked him. Johnny resisted the attack successfully and pursued the fleeing eye. Working independently, the Thing, Medusa, and Mr. Fantastic followed reported sightings of the Dragon Man to Long Island. They arrived at Gideon's base, but his minions defeated them all.

(Fantastic Four I#135) - The Torch arrived at Gideon's base, but Gideon used the Dragon Man to defeat him. After his men placed the Torch in a cell, Gideon intended to use a device called the Eternity Machine to drain power from the Fantastic Four, whom he had all placed in separate cells or under restraints on platforms. The Dragon Man acted up when it saw the trussed up Sue, but Gideon subdued the android with a sonic control device.

   As preparations continued, Medusa revived and used her hair to awaken the Torch in the adjoining cell; working together, they freed themselves and the Thing. Gideon's men mounted a poorly organized offensive against the liberated adventurers, but the heroes prevailed. However, Gideon had begun to leech power from Sue, Franklin, and Reed, and employed that power against the Thing--in fact, Gideon even began to siphon power from Ben. Medusa, having deduced the way in which Gideon controlled the Dragon Man, used her hair to remove the sonic controller in its skull. Dragon Man awakened, startling Gideon, and Ben used that moment to muster all of his strength to hurl Gideon away. The perturbed Dragon Man slammed Gideon with its tail, and jumped on the Eternity Machine; the Machine exploded, killing Gideon.

(Fantastic Four I#136) - Soon after, Gregory Gideon's corpse was recovered, and his son Thomas grieved over it.

Comments: Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Gregory Gideon actually returned 100 issues after his last appearance for the story-line in which he died.  Leave it to Roy Thomas, who wrote that later story-line, to come up with a milestone in that vein.  But as pointed out by Grant Rybicki, the Continental Op:
The second Gideon story was written by Gerry Conway, not Roy Thomas, although Roy was the editor and it could have been his idea.

Gregory Gideon actually had a few coattails. His son Thomas became a pupil of the Shaper of Worlds, under the name Glorian. Gregory Gideon's Earth-712 counterpart was revealed to have founded the Serpent Crown on that world, and opposed the Squadron Supreme. In Fantastic Four III#35, the Gideon Trust, an organization allegedly related to Gideon's estate, appeared for the first time.

"Slugger" Johnson, one of Gideon's lackeys, was struck by a ray from the Eternity Machine in issue #136, and this somehow attracted the Shaper of Worlds to him. The result was a bizarre world (Earth-73836) based on Johnson's nostalgia for his youth in the 1950s, with characters based on everything from rock and roll, the film The Wild One, Mickey Spillane's "Mike Hammer", Joe McCarthy, and so forth.  When FF I#136-137 came out, it was perfectly feasible for "Slugger" Johnson to have been a youth during the 1950s, but due to Marvel's sliding timescale, we'll have to presume it was all based on his having frequently watched Lords of Flatbush, Happy Days, Grease, Book of Love, The Outsiders, Inventing the Abbots, and so forth.

Profile by Per Degaton and Prime Eternal. Expansion by Ron Fredricks.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Gregory Hungerford Gideon should not be confused with:

The Eternity Machine has no known connections to:

Eternity Machine

Located within a Long Island research center owned by Gregory Gideon, it was an immense device powered by atomic energy; its intended function was to siphon the cosmic-ray energy from the altered genes of the Fantastic Four, then transfer it to the dying Gideon's "biological shell" armor.

Gideon initially used it to drain some of the energy from the unconscious Reed and Sue Richards; he was thus granted superhuman strength comparable to the Thing, whom he engaged in battle But the machine was wrecked when the Dragon Man leapt upon the device, and Gideon was killed in the resultant explosion.

Sue revived shortly afterward, but Reed was still unconscious, so the Human Torch used his flames to match the power of Gideon's atomic plant; the powerful surge of energy flowed through the machine's circuits, and Reed was revived.

However, rays from the briefly reactivated Eternity Machine also infused the body of "Slugger" Johnson, one of Gideon's henchmen--this attracted the attention of the Shaper of Worlds, who drained the energy from Johnson to create Earth-73836, an altered pocket-reality that reflected Johnson's dreams of life in the 1950s (see comments).

(Comment: All that was depicted of this machine was the ray projector, but the supporting equipment seen in the background of the Gideon profiles main image was probably included for its operation; and it was never explained why Gideon referred to it as "the Eternity Machine"--perhaps he hoped that the stolen energy would also make him immortal?)

--Fantastic Four I#135 (135, 136

images: (without ads)
Fantastic Four I#135, p4, pan1 (main image - Gregory Gideon, wearing "biological shell")
Fantastic Four I#34, p5, pan1 (headshot - Gregory Gideon)
Fantastic Four I#34, p5, pan3 (Gregory Gideon accepts challenge)
Fantastic Four I#135, p16, pan6 (Gregory Gideon battles Thing)
Fantastic Four I#136, p1, pan1 (Gregory Gideon's corpse; Thomas Gideon )
Fantastic Four I#135, p4, pan1 (Mr. Fantastic, Franklin Richards, and Sue Richards restrained under Eternity Machine; Thing, Medusa in containment cells [background])
Fantastic Four I#135, p15, pan3 (Gregory Gideon siphons power from Mr. Fantastic and Sue Richards)

Appearances:
Fantastic Four I#34 (January, 1965) - Stan Lee (writer/editor), Jack Kirby (pencils), Chic Stone (inks), Artie Simek (letters)
Fantastic Four I#134-136 (May-July, 1973) - Gerry Conway & Roy Thomas (#136) (writer), John Buscema & Joe Sinnott (pencils), Joe Sinnott (inks), Roy Thomas (editor)
Untold Tales of Spider-Man#21 (May, 1997) - Kurt Busiek (writer), Pat Olliffe (pencils), Al Williamson (inks), Tom Brevoort (editor)

First posted: 07/23/2003
Last updated: 05/21/2024

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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