Mindscape

The Puppet Master now has control over the Thing. Inside the Thing’s conscious mind, he wages a battle of wills against the Puppet Master. He hears his voice inside his head and learns how the Puppet Master supplanted his own consciousness into his supply of radioactive clay shortly after the destruction of his corporeal body in a battle with Doctor Doom. In the real world, the Puppet Master no longer has a human form but can assume any shape he desires from the clay he now inhabits.

Now, trapped in this mindscape, the Puppet Master is visualized as a person of great physical prowess. But it is not the rocky, five-hundred-pound Thing that he fights, but rather, it is Ben Grimm, for this is the way that the Thing envisions himself in his own mind. But Ben realizes that a human Ben Grimm cannot defeat the Puppet Master. He has to manipulate his subconscious to become the Thing in mind as well as body.

The Thing finally overwhelms the Puppet Master and forces him out of his mind. As the Thing regains control of his body, he looks around horrified. He realizes now that the battle he fought in the mindscape had been played out in reality as well. Several city blocks of New York city are devastated.

The Thing tracks down the Puppet Master and finds him locked inside a clay semblance of the Thing. He dares him to try and assume a new shape. But the Puppet Master has peered too deeply into the Thing’s mind and cannot handle this form anymore. His clay body turns brittle and finally collapses into a heap of dusty rocks.

Recurring Characters

Thing, Puppet Master

Continuity Notes

• The Puppet Master recalls his ordeals up to this point: How he tried to trap the Fantastic Four in Liddleville with Doctor Doom in Fantastic Four #236 only for the pair of them to get trapped there themselves. The Puppet Master and Doom's battle over Liddleville in Micronauts #41 and lastly when the Doombots liberated Doom in Fantastic Four #246. He escaped into his current clay form in Thing #4.

• Although seemingly destroyed here, the Puppet Master is reformed by the Sphinx in Thing #34 and restored to his human body.