Major Story Arcs
During a conflict with Manslaughter, Gargoyle suddenly disappears from the Defenders‘ base. They assume he was caught by Manslaughter, but actually he was summoned by a sorcerer in Afghanistan.
The sorcerer was able to summon Gargoyle because of his demon’s body. He imprisons him in a flaming pentagram, and controls him with a pentagram of stone.
He demands that Gargoyle make gold, and to Gargoyle’s surprise, he does.
The wizard is a Gnostic, and wants to use Gargoyle to rid the Earth of impurity. The wizard works for the Afghani Mujahideen, who barely tolerate him in their fight against the Soviets, who occupy Afghanistan at the time. He uses Gargoyle’s power to defeat a Soviet attack. When the Mujahideen aren’t impressed enough, he turns on them and kills them too. Then he goes to the Soviet command and tortures them, again using Gargoyle’s magic–magic that Gargoyle himself didn’t know he had.
Gargoyle tricks him into going to the United States, to gain riches. Gargoyle hopes to attract Dr. Strange‘s help, but the wizard realizes what he’s doing. Disgusted by New York City, and seeing a billboard for Colorado, he goes there next.
The Defenders sense Gargoyle’s presence nearby, and go to help him. They try to talk to the sorcerer, but he attacks them through Gargoyle. He thinks they are demons.
Beast eventually realizes that he is a Gnostic, and tries to distract him by talking with him using Gnostic terminology. The distraction doesn’t last, and the battle continues. Finally they realize that he can’t see well, and blind him with a flash of lightning bouncing off of Dragonfang. He then sees the Defenders as their true souls, most of which are pure and good, unlike the demons he thought they were, until he looks at Moondragon and Valkyrie, who he sees as Dragon and Death, and flees in terror. He breaks the pentagram that holds Gargoyle, who is freed.
He ends up cowering and nearly insane from his sight. They have some forest rangers pick him up and put him in custody as a mad vagrant.
Powers and Abilities
The Gnostic Wizard has at least some magical powers of his own: he is, for instance, able to summon Gargoyle’s presence, and control him. However he seems to not be very magically skilled overall, and had many failures before summoning Isaac.
With Gargoyle’s powers, he was capable of teleportation, creating a huge ghost hand with great strength, manipulating people’s bodies as if they were clay, telepathy capable of breaking Moondragon’s mind connection with Gargoyle, control of the elements, creating illusions, and other powerful effects.