
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. The Gargoyle found himself trapped aboard a satellite in Earth’s orbit, where the subversive scientific organization Advanced Idea Mechanics rescued him. He was confronted by Captain America, the Falcon, and Nick Fury, cornered, and accidentally shot into space. Later, an attempted to acquire the deadly compound dubbed "Element X" went horribly wrong.

Iron Man returned when the Gargoyle’s power wore off, stopping the villain by destroying the machinery he hoped to abscond with. 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. He was twice bested in combat by him before returning to what had proved more successful in the past- pure mercenary endeavors. The Grey Gargoyle, bored with lack of challenge to his crimes, decided to travel to America and wrest the secret of immortality from Thor. 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. He also discovered that any matter he touched also turned to stone. Accidentally touching his other hand, he found that he could transform his entire body into the stone-like material.

To his dismay, his hand began to turn to stone-like material still capable of movement. 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.
