Gregory Gideon

Gregory Hungerford Gideon is an American man and former financier, and was at one point the world's richest man, worth several billion dollars. Gideon was obsessed with power, control, and wealth for its own sake, and lived in a colossal palace in Westchester, New York. After almost losing his young son Thomas due to his own blind avarice, Gideon renounced his fortune, donating his billions to charity. Until his change of heart, Gideon was the owner of the Baxter Building.

Biography

By early 1965, Gideon was the richest person in the world and sought to become even richer and more powerful to the point of controlling virtually all of the world's financial systems. He made a wager with three other similarly wealthy men around the world that they would give up their holdings to him if he could defeat the Fantastic Four within the week. Gideon set up a pair of tricks to fool the Four into fighting each other: a note on how to impersonate Mr. Fantastic, suggesting that he was a Skrull; and a note ostensibly from the Human Torch suggesting that he was a robot made by Doctor Doom. The Thing and Invisible Girl respectively took these baits, and the Four soon found themselves violently at odds. As they fought through the streets of New York, Gideon set up a time machine in the Baxter Building with the aim to send the heroes into the distant past, removing them from the world permanently. Gideon had spent thirty million dollars on the machine, modeled after a similar device used by Doctor Doom. Thomas Gideon, a fan of the Fantastic Four's comic books, tried to stop the heroes from falling into his father's trap, but he and Thing wound up in the time machine's clutches. As they faded away, Mr. Fantastic managed to stop the process. So distraught by nearly losing his son was Gideon that he apologized for his actions and vowed to renounce his wealth to charity and to live a peaceful life with his wife and son.