Gargantus made his first appearance in Tales of Suspense #40, the first issue featuring Iron Man’s golden armor. He was created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Robert Bernstein in 1963.
Gargantus is an extraterrestrial, large, robotic Neanderthal sent to take control of earth. Gargantus’ story begins, oddly enough, 80,000 years ago when an unnamed alien race scouted the Earth. At the time, Cavemen were the only living beings on the planet so they created a robot, disguised as a normal human. However, they did not use the robot until nearly 80,000 years later, when life on Earth had changed drastically. Gargantus was created with the ability to hypnotize humans with his eyes, and force them to do his bidding.
Gargantus is sent to the small town of Granville, in which he hypnotizes the citizens and forces them to build a wall around the city, trapping those inside and prevented those of outside from entering. Unfortunately for him, one of the citizens of Granville, Marion, had a date with Tony Stark, and her absence caused him to investigate.
Now sporting the Iron Man suit, Tony Stark realizes what is happening and attempts to stop it. After several failed attempts at simply attacking Gargantus, (He turned all the citizens against Iron Man) he lures him out by calling him on a loudspeaker. A brief battle ensues but due to the robots immense strength, Iron Man is no match for him. Tony realizes that the being is a robot after seeing his light-bulb eyes. He deduces that the only way to defeat it would be to pull it apart with magnets. This plan works, and Gargantus’ reign of terror over the people of Granville is over.
Later in the issue, Stark discovers a dark cloud hovering over the city. After turning the magnet on the cloud, he discovers the aliens attempting to hide their spaceship. Fearing destruction similar to that done to Gargantus, they fled, never to return again.
If you haven’t, check out the last profile:
Wong-Chu!
And stay tuned for the next Iron Man Villain Profile – (The Other) Dr. Strange!