Gregson Gilbert (Earth-616)

Not much is known about the early life of Professor Gregson Gilbert. By his own accounts his childhood was filled with wonder and he grew up on tales of dragons and other mythological creatures. He was happy until his parents and sister died. Alone in the world he focused on his work to try and fill the void in his life left by the deaths of his family members. He became obsessed with creating artificial life and became an expert in robotics and android technology.^[2]

Gregson's dreams came to fruition by the time he was a professor working at State University in New York, spending his free time constructing an android dubbed the Dragon Man, much to the frustration of the administration of the school, who demanded that Gilbert not conduct his private experiments while school was in session. Regardless of this, Gregson completed construction of the Dragon Man, all it was missing was the spark of life.^[1] Unknown to Gregson he was influenced by a self-replicating program/entity called the Cosmic Automation. This dataloop traveled the universe compelling intelligent life forms to create artificial life in an attempt to imprint it's cosmic programming into the vessel.^[3] The day that Gregson completed his Dragon Man construct coincided with a visit to State University by the Fantastic Four, whose leader Mister Fantastic was an alumni of State U, and their youngest member the Human Torch was enrolling. The Fantastic Four's Thing, another State U alumni, helped Gregson with moving a large cube of rock that was collected from outer space. The Fantastic Four were not the only visitors that day, as their foe the alchemist known as Diablo had also learned of Gregson and sought him out. Diablo appealed to Gilbert's desire to bring the Dragon Man to life, and the pair combined science and alchemy to achieve this.^[1] Unfortunately, Diablo's interference in bringing the Dragon Man to life caused the Cosmic Automation to pass over the Dragon Man as a vessel for its program.^[3]

What Gilbert and Diablo brought to life was a nearly mindless creature that instantly went on the rampage on campus. Gregson watched in horror as Diablo attempted to use the Dragon Man for his own evil machinations until both were eventually defeated by the Fantastic Four and seemingly perished in Dead Man's Lake.^[1] Both would survive, and the Dragon Man would remain out of Gilbert's life for many years to come. The corruption of his invention Gregson gave up on creating anymore robots and primarily focused on education for many years thereafter. He even went so far as to destroy all his plans for the Dragon Man design so nobody could recreate his invention.^[2] Over the years Dragon Man was exploited by criminals and clashed with Earth's man super-heroes.

In that time, Gregson left State University and began giving lectures at Empire State University. He briefly regained control of the Dragon Man. He was later hired by Doctor Dorcus and Diane Arliss to work on a device that would restore Diane's brother Todd to normal after he was transformed into the amphibious Tigershark. At that time Tigershark was a prisoner of the kingdom of Atlantis, or so they believed. When Diane demanded her brother's release she did not believe Lady Dorma's admission that Tigershark escaped captivity. Diane had Dorma kidnapped and held prisoner at Empire State University in order to draw out her lover the Sub-Mariner and force him to release Tigershark. The Sub-Mariner instead attacked ESU, and Gregson unleashed his Dragon Man to fight him off. Ultimately, Dragon Man destroyed the device that would have restored Todd to normal, and Namor trapped it in a freezer car in a rail yard to incapacitate it once it became uncontrollable. Gregson and his cohorts were then forced to release Lady Dorma back to Namor.^[4]

About this time a drug dealer named Diangelo had managed to take control of Dragon Man, using the creature to steal parts to make more creatures similar to him, using a sonic transmitter to force the creature to do his bidding. Diangelo then sent the Dragon Man to capture Gilbert in order to force him to construct new robotic creatures for them to take over organized crime in New York. The kidnapping was witnessed by the youthful heroines Lightspeed and Energizer of the Power Pack. While the girls got Dragon Man to the relative safety of the storage area of the apartment building their family lived, their call to the police to rescue Gregson went unanswered.^[5] Diangelo and his thugs then reigned in the Dragon Man to force Gilbert to construct the new robots they demanded, but their hideout was tracked down by the entire Power Pack as well as the vigilantes known as Cloak and Dagger. By the time the heroes intervened, Gilbert had created what Diangelo wanted of his and his new robots took the Power Pack hostage to force Cloak and Dagger to also do Diangelo's bidding.^[2] Eventually the Power Pack broke free and destroyed the sonic transmitter that controlled the Dragon Man, allowing all parties to escape. Gregson then built a headband that blocked out any other transmission and they went to work destroying the robots he created for Diangelo. With the drug dealer's dreams of ruling the New York underworld crushed, Gregson was left to turn them over to the authorities. When a police officer suggested that his robots were more sophisticated than the animatronics at Disney World, Gilbert was once again inspired.^[6] However if he followed through on this inspiration remains unrevealed.

A few years later, Gregson began working at State University again, and the Dragon Man would periodically return to his creator. Gregson always allowed the creature to roam free and made attempts to try and train it to be more docile with marginal success. Eventually, Gregson was replaced by a Skrull spy for a undisclosed period of time. The Dragon Man was able to detect that "Gregson" was an impostor and attacked him. This attack coincided by with another visit to State University by the Human Torch and the Thing. The pair rescued "Gilbert" from the Dragon Man and agreed to protect him while he worked on his latest project. When the Dragon Man returned, the Skrull impostor unleashed a new android creation called Zzord and unleashed it on the Dragon Man, hoping to destroy the creature before it could expose its secret. However when the Human Torch questioned "Gilbert's" attempts to destroy his creation, the Skrull foolishly revealed himself. The Torch quickly defeated the Skrull and freed the real Gregson. Gilbert then approached his creature and it instantly stopped fighting the Thing. With the situation explained, Gregson allowed his creature to leave freely, knowing that it would eventually come back to him when it was ready.^[7]

Professor Gilbert's current activities are unknown.

Professor Gilbert is an accomplished scientist with extensive knowledge of robotics.

Conventional and advanced technology as needed.