Gargoyle

Gargoyle is a Soviet scientist mutated into a small, super-intelligent but physically monstrous form, who encounters Bruce Banner in the very first Hulk story. He serves as an early Cold War antagonist, his tragic condition reflecting the era's anxieties about nuclear experimentation.

Few characters can claim a more historic debut than Gargoyle, who stepped onto the page in The Incredible Hulk #1 in 1962 — one of the most celebrated first issues in Marvel history, conjured by the legendary team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at the very dawn of the Silver Age. Sharing that landmark issue with Bruce Banner, Rick Jones, Betty Ross, and other early Hulk mainstays, Gargoyle is woven into the fabric of one of comics' most iconic origin stories. That debut alone earns collector-significant key-issue status, and the fact that it continues to be celebrated through facsimile editions and Marvel Masterworks collections speaks to just how enduring that first thunderclap of Hulk mythology truly is. If you're tracing Marvel's Silver Age roots back to their source, Gargoyle is right there at ground zero.