The Clutches Of The Puppet Master!
The Puppet Master is back for the third time this month, only this time he only has eyes for one half of the Fantastic Four. Taking control of Torch and sending him to Alicia's apartment to lay down the Johnny Storm charm in an attempt to makeThing go berserk and start laying it into the poor little guy. Long story short; it works, and the pretty much the following ten pages are just Thing and Torch going at it unaware that one of them is being controlled (badly) by The Puppet Master. Much like his second appearance in Fantastic Four #14, Alicia's step-father plays a rather rudimentary, out of the way role here as he guides chaos from the sidelines rather than be in amongst the action like he was during his debut some time ago. This renders much of the issue rather stagnant and neither Johnny or Ben have any great moments together. It seems that when the Four fight amongst themselves, it tends to work better when it's in light spirits. Much like The Hate Monger issue ofFF, this one just never clicks.
A much better read this time around however is part two which once again offers up another piece of Strange fiction as Dr. Strange goes up against his nemesisNightmare. The plot is simple; Nightmare is trapping mortals in comas of sort, stuck in his surreal world of horror and macabre as a means to somehow make his eventual domination of the mortal realm a little easier. Dr. Strange however, is not having it, and he sets off to rescue the sleeping victims. So it's not exactly the biggest of plots, but it serves well enough for Steve Ditko to well and truly stretch out his artistic vision and provide one of the most arresting and interesting visual components to a story seen yet. Painted in deep purples, silhouettes, strong shadows and bizarre compositions, the world of Nightmare is exactly that—nightmareish. And it's just a load of fun to read through.
Oh, and a special thank you for all the readers out there who have been following the blog. One hundred down, about seventy million to go. Thanks, guys.
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