The Midnight Monster

1st app.- Journey into Mystery #79

Victor Avery was a wealthy, handsome (but arrogant) scientist who had created a serum that would mutate life-forms to become immortal. After testing it on a rose, he found it was a success, but the rose grew huge and ugly as a side effect. Ignoring the protests of his friends, Victor then tested it on a cat, and it was successful again. But the cat mutated like the rose did, transforming into a snarling monster.
Week later Victor attended a classy party and caught sight of a beautiful woman and immediately wanted her for his own. He woos her, but a few weeks later she tells him that she is in love with Bill Cooper, a graduate of engineering school and they are going to get married. Enraged that she has chosen a penniless engineer over him, Victor vows revenge.
For days, he stews in his anger, until in a moment of rash action he seize his serum and downs the entire tube. Almost immediately afterwards, Victor becomes immortal but mutates into a lumpy, gray-skinned monster. He sets out to gain revenge on his former lover and Bill. He lumbers his way across the city and climbs up a building to break into Bill’s apartment. But he finds that another man is occupying the apartment and Bill has moved out after getting married. Victor decides to hunt them down and kill them both.
He storms into the office of one of Bill’s professors to find out where they’ve gone. Although the professor shoots him several times, the bullets bounce away harmlessly. Under interrogation, the professor reveals that Bill has gone west seeking an engineering job. Victor shambles across the countryside by night, earning the name of The Midnight Monster from the terrified townspeople he encounters.
Meanwhile in a tension filled conference room in Washington, the military makes a plan to stop the menace of the Midnight Monster. A couple of nights later, the Midnight Monster overhears on a television set inside a person’s house that the government has challenged the Monster to pit his strength against their new ‘ray-machine’ at the outskirts of Los Alamos. Angered, the Midnight Monster steals a jeep and takes off. The next day he arrives and finds a small squad of soldiers and a futuristic ray machine. The Midnight Monster lumbers towards them, only to fall into concealed near-bottomless pit. Being immortal, the Midnight Monster obviously survives the fall but is trapped forever. Meanwhile the military thanks Bill, who with his fine engineering skills built the worlds deepest whole in record time.

Credit- marvunapp.com