How Not to Revamp a Villain: The Puppet Master.

So the Puppet Master is one of those villains. Y'know the kind, the one trick pony. Who only has one trick. When a character in the Fantastic Four suddenly starts acting out of character you can pretty much put money on the fact that it'll be the Puppet Master's doing. The only wrinkle that makes him interesting is that he's directly related to Benn Grimm's girlfriend Alicia Masters.

(Well not DIRECTLY related, since he's her step-father. But you get the point.)

So when you have a villain like this (for example The Mad Thinker, or Arcade) what do you do with them? You can only use them so many times because they get repetitive. The answer is simple -- you take the core of the character, and then you revamp it! So that's what they (that is Stan Lee and artist Bob Powell) did with the Pupper Master in Strange Tales #133.

What? WHAT THE FUCK

Ben Grimm: Jerk

Hey, Ben Grimm - what do you say to your friend when you find out that his wife's been replaced by a Skrull?

(Fantastic Four #357, written by Tom DeFalco, art by Paul Ryan and Danny Bulanadi)

Yeah, uh...not that.

Given that the guy standing next to Ben there is noted evil mind-controller the Puppet Master, Johnny takes this about as well as you'd expect.  They spend the next five pages beating the crap out of each other; at no point does Ben dispel the notion that he's being mind-controlled, nor does he tell Johnny what the hell is going on.  Honestly, I think he just wanted an excuse to smack the Torch around for stealing his woman.