Fantastic Four (1961 series) #14

The Fantastic Four return in their rocket from the Moon where they fought the Red Ghost last issue. They get clearance to land at New York's Idlewild airport, and the press record how Mr Fantastic is mobbed by female fans, Thing is challenged by a wrestler and Invisible Girl hides from media offers - until Human Torch creates a hot air funnel which sucks his teammates up and deposits them atop their Baxter Building HQ.

While the 3 men relax Sue Storm does housework (early 60's stereotyping). Reed Richards does get up to write a report for NASA on his new rocket fuel, but then goes to ask Sue to (stereo)type it up. But he finds her using his new Roving-Eye device to search the oceans for Namor the Sub-Mariner. He tells her he wishes she *could* find him so they could resolve the love-triangle between them. Then alone he muses how his intellect and superpower can't help him win the heart of the girl he loves. And Sue recalls the Eye because the oceans are just too vast.

Meanwhile a man checks himself out of a sanatorium after recovering from a fall from a high window (#8). We see him sitting on a bench whittling away at a piece of wood and wondering which of 'their' enemies to turn it into. Maybe the Mole Man (#1) or a Skrull (#2). Dr Doom seems to have vanished (shrunk to 'nothing' in #10). We see that it is of course the Puppet Master and he's subconsciously whittled an image of the Sub-Mariner.

Namor himself is searching for his missing Atlantean people. He's found traces of 1 of their shelters which has been used within the last decade. But suddenly something grips his mind and compels him to return to his undersea home to carry out a mission for the Puppet Master. He uses a mento-fish to transmit his thoughts to Sue to summon her to meet him. She turns invisible to slip past the others and finds him on a deserted Lower East Side pier. But he doesn't respond to her greeting but uses a hypno-fish. The same fish can also create a huge bubble to contain her and air to breath so they can transport her to Subby's HQ.

Puppet Master watches this with glee and then hurries home to create another Namor puppet out of his radioactive clay to control him completely. He has to wear a hazmat suit because of the radiation until he's coated the statue in lead paint. (I don't know how PM influenced SM initially with only a wooden image.) He intends to only control Namor because his revenge will be sweeter if he leaves the FF to be beaten without hampering them.

Sub-Mariner appears to the 3 male FFers as a hologram, but that doesn't stop Torch and Thing trying to attack it. Namor tells them he has Sue prisoner and challenges them to come and rescue her. Masters prepares to witness the conflict in a Navy-surplus 1-man submarine. Reed Richards and Johnny Storm head off in the flying Fantasticar while Ben Grimm detaches his section to go see his girlfriend Alicia, the villain's stepdaughter. After an altercation with a jobsworth who doesn't want him to land his vehicle in a car-parking space he visits the blind sculptress who's worried about the FF fighting Sub-Mariner in his own element, and insists on coming with them. After another argument with the parking attendant they fly to where Reed has got an experimental bathyscaphe from an Admiral Sawyer, and amazingly gets no argument over Alicia from his leader.

They descend to the nearest very deep ocean area which Reed suspects their target is in. Their craft isn't harmed when a huge undersea 'porcupine' fires large quills at them, but it is sucked in by an underwater tornado. Torch flies out with white-hot flames which break it up by turning it to steam, but then his flame gives out and Mr Fantastic has to stretch to drag him back to the bathyscaphe. However the sub then drives through the wide-open mouth of a really giant clam which slams shut and emits chloroform vapour which puts them to sleep.

When they awaken in Sub-Mariner's conveniently air-filled room they see Invisible Girl in an air-filled glass globe which is held in the tentacles of the biggest octopus in the world, itself inside a water-filled tank. Reed begins to suspect something's not right because Namor loves Sue and would never harm her.

Subby challenges them to single combat and Johnny rushes in 1st. But the foe produces a flame-eater 'fish' which looks like a staff weapon with a bunch of waving tentacles at each end. He waves it around and it absorbs all Torch's flame, and then he closes in to defeat the human in a fist fight. But Thing grabs him to save the kid. However SM slides out of his grip and is painfully replaced by a large chunk of dagger-needle coral. Then Subby throws a lump of deep-sea fungus at him which rapidly spreads to encase him in a rock-hard prison. But of course our hero smashes his way free. Reed sends Ben to free Sue while *he* entangles the enemy in a cage of elastic limbs. Thing climbs into the tank and the giant octopus lets go of Sue's bubble to face him. Grimm grabs all the tentacles and whirls the creature out of the tank to the top of the huge domed enclosure. Then he releases Sue, holding her breath, and they swim out of the water tank.

Puppet Master can somehow see what's happening from his sub and isn't happy. He determines to take direct control of Sub-Mariner. Namor has only so far been trying to defeat the FF but now PM makes him try to kill them. Alicia sense someone controlling their foe like her step-father could, but they all believe *he*'s dead. SM picks up what looks like a bundle of bamboo stalks and tells them it will release a deadly gas. PM tries to make him do it but Namor can't understand why Sue must die. His 'master' *makes* his hands trigger the gas which envelops the Four and Alicia. But when the vapour subsides they're all still standing, and Reed reveals that he gave them all flex-o-gen masks to cover their faces.

The 3 males charge forward to attack Sub-Mariner but Sue interposes herself as usual claiming that Alicia must be right and someone's controlling him. At that point the giant octopus smashes through the plexiglass dome above them into the ocean beyond. And the 1st thing it sees is Puppet Master's submarine. PM quickly creates a model of it from his special clay. But the animal hasn't enough brain for him to control and it crushes the sub.

As water rushes into the dome Human Torch welds the hole closed. Namor dramatically recovers from the 'pressure' on his mind, but can't remember how and why the Fantastic Four are in his home. He thinks maybe Sue has come the her senses and come to share his domain. She admits to being fascinated by him but her loyalty is with Reed, and maybe sometime in the future she'll figure out where her heart lies. He tells them to leave him to continue his search for his people, but warns them that when he does the surface world will suffer. Then the 5 leave in the bathyscaphe wondering if the Puppet Master was *really* involved.