Puppet Master

The Puppet Master, birth name unknown, is a sculptor and villain primarily opposing the Fantastic Four. He possesses the ability to create small puppets of anyone and make the people that the puppets represent carry out his bidding. He is the stepfather of Alicia Masters—while she refers to him as her father, he is adamant that she only call him her stepfather.

Biography

Early battles with the Fantastic Four

While it is unknown how the Puppet Master came upon his abilities, it is known that he started testing them in grotesque ways, by making innocent people attempt to harm or kill themselves. After Fantastic Four member Human Torch saved a man who was attempting to jump off of a bridge under Puppet Master's control, Puppet Master sought revenge against the Four and made a figure of the Thing. Thing mindlessly entered Puppet Master's home, followed silently by Invisible Girl; the two walked into a trap, as Puppet Master knocked out Invisible Girl with a room-full of ether. He proceeded to disguise his blind stepdaughter Alicia Masters as Invisible Girl and send her and the controlled Thing back to the Four's headquarters. Upon arrival, Thing went on a rampage attacking Mr. Fantastic and Torch, but Fantastic guided him into an experimental potion he had been working on, transforming Thing into his flesh-and-blood Ben Grimm self again and negating Puppet Master's control.

Meanwhile, Puppet Master had controlled the local prison's warden into freeing all of its prisoners. Invisible Girl managed to briefly escape from the Puppet Master's custody, long enough to use her flare gun to signal her teammates. The rest of the Four and Alicia arrived, but Puppet Master used a large puppet monstrosity to distract them long enough to escape on a flying puppet horse. Learning of a riot at the prison, the Four made haste there, as Puppet Master returned to his home. Feeling suitably satisfied with his recent "practice," he planned to make a puppet of himself as ruler of the world, but Alicia stopped him, and in the struggle he fell from the window.Puppet Master survived the fall and was committed to a mental institution, where he spent several months before he was declared to be cured. Upon his discharge, Puppet Master schemed his revenge against the Fantastic Four, deciding to recruit their nemesis Namor the Sub-Mariner to assist. Creating a Namor puppet, he successfully took control of the Sub-Mariner. Namor took Invisible Girl captive and used her as bait to lure the rest of the Fantastic Four—and, unwittingly, Thing's girlfriend, Alicia—to his undersea lair. Namor and the Four battled as intended, but a giant octopus under Namor's control was freed and attacked the submarine from which Puppet Master observed the battle.

Puppet Master managed to escape the attack, using his submarine's powerful jets to escape to the surface. Several months later, he again set his sights on the Fantastic Four, but this time decided to employ a divide-and-conquer strategy. He controlled the Human Torch remotely, convincing him to hit on Alicia. He did so in Alicia's apartment, just as Thing was walking in, and the two fought. This went largely according to Puppet Master's plan, except that the two held back from doing any serious damage to each other due to their underlying friendship. The two heroes fought through the city, and Puppet Master decided to intervene to deal with them personally. Alicia also showed up, and she and her stepfather repeatedly traded mental influence over the Torch, and eventually he burned the puppet in the villain's hand, burning and injuring him. Realizing the true culprit, Thing went to beat up the Puppet Master, but Alicia pleaded with him to show mercy. Thing released him, allowing the Puppet Master to escape, and the two heroes made up once more.

Puppet Master went into hiding for several months until he was located and contacted by the Mad Thinker. Thinker, known for his supreme deductive skills and predictive algorithms, proposed teaming with Puppet Master to defeat the Fantastic Four once and for all. Puppet Master was hesitant, but upon hearing Thinker's plan agreed to cooperate. Thinker supplied him with the materials to make a puppet of Professor X, leader of the X-Men, the intent being to command the X-Men to defeat the Fantastic Four. Professor X proved an incredibly resistant target, as his exceedingly powerful mental power held off the villains' remote assault for some time. Puppet Master used a larger-than-usual amount of radioactive clay and was eventually able to seize control of Professor X's mind. Through Puppet Master's commands, Xavier told the X-Men that their next task was to defeat the Fantastic Four, claiming that they were planning world domination. The X-Men were baffled, but nonetheless trusted in their leader and set out to do as he ordered. The Thinker's plans went as he calculated, as the X-Men kidnapped Invisible Girl and lured the rest of the Four to a predetermined island where Thinker and Puppet Master had set a trap. As the two teams fought each other, the villains sprung various booby traps and released Thinker's Awesome Android. But Beast of the X-Men was able to destroy the Professor X puppet, allowing the X-Men's leader to strike the Android's artificial nervous system from afar and incapacitate it. With the nine heroes' attention turned toward them, Thinker and Puppet Master narrowly escaped by plane through a secret underground tunnel.

Thinker was determined to defeat the Fantastic Four, in spite of Puppet Master having utterly given up on it after falling to them several times. He ensured Puppet Master that he had a new plan with a near-certain chance of success: notably, they would be targeting only the Human Torch, the youngest member of the group. Under Thinker's orders, Puppet Master made a puppet of the Thing, which he used to attack Torch while they were in the Fantasticar together. Thing punched Torch, who hit his head against the side of the vehicle and fell, plummeting unconscious to the ground below. This released the puppet's effect, and ace pilot Ben Grimm quickly flew the Fantasticar under Johnny's falling body, saving him in the nick of time. The two villains didn't see this however, and assumed that Torch had fallen to his death: they soon learned over the radio that their plan had failed. Thinker next had Puppet Master create another Thing puppet, this time with more clay than he had ever used before. He had him command the Thing to "grow weaker" in an attempt to strip him of all of his power. But at that exact moment, Thing was strapped into a special device developed by Mr. Fantastic, which reverted Puppet Master's attack on himself, knocking him unconscious. Thinker cursed his misfortune, but vowed to defeat the Fantastic Four somehow.

Rebirth

Utterly frustrated, Puppet Master took drastic measures to defeat his nemeses. He had plastic surgery to significantly alter his face so that they wouldn't recognize him, and took a different approach to his puppeteering. Instead of controlling living beings, he began to craft statues that he could then animate and control. In early 1965, he set up his sculptures in the sub-basement of a mall in New York, along with a powerful metal clamping contraption capable of exerting 100,000 pounds of pressure to contain the Thing; and a mechanical "ice queen" statue that blasted frigid air to disable the Human Torch. He lured the two into his hideout and successfully trapped them at first, but they were soon able to escape. The frightened Puppet Master backed into the machine that he used to create his statues, turning himself into a mannequin and allowing for easy retrieval by the police. Puppet Master was eventually released, and swore off any further encounters with the Fantastic Four. Soon however, he was coerced by Doctor Doom's emotion machine into attacking the Baxter Building on the day of the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm. As fans and reporters crowded around the front of the Baxter Building and invitees arrived and were greeted by the Thing, Puppet Master attempted to initiate his plan. He had created a puppet of an arbitrary stranger and equipped the man's hand with a poison syringe such that the Thing would be poisoned when he shook it. As the man approached, Nick Fury and a couple of other undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. agents tackled him, and Fury explained to Thing that a remote brainwave scan had revealed that he was under mind control. Puppet Master fled through the crowd, annoyed that he had even wanted to go through with this plan in the first place. Many other villains were similarly summoned to the Baxter Building, much more willing to fight than Puppet Master had been. A veritable legion of villains fought a similarly powerful force of heroes defending the Baxter Building. In the end, Reed Richards used a device provided by Uatu to transport all of the villains back slightly in time and wipe their memories of these events. Reed and Sue Storm were thus successfully and peacefully married.