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| Publisher |
Marvel |
| Published | April 1981 |
After a day of hard Christmas shopping, Ben and girlfriend Alicia Masters are sending out Christmas cards and Alicia pushes Ben to send one to Alicia's stepfather, the Puppet Master. The Puppet Master is being paroled just as the card gets there, and when he discovers that his supply of radioactive clay (necessary to make his puppets) has disintegrated, he decides to take advantage of Ben to get more of the special clay from the Balkan Mountains that it comes from. He crashes Ben's Christmas party (Alicia invites him up, of course), and eventually he manages to manipulate Franklin Richards into getting the Fantastic Four to agree to give him a ride to the Balkans as a Christmas gift.Ben and Alicia accompany him, and the three are shortly in the Balkans and settled in for the night. The Puppet Master slips out, of course, to go find his clay, but is soon captured by... two wooden soldiers "the size of trees".The Thing and Alicia go looking for him the next day, of course, but are unable to find him. They end up visiting a mysterious old woman named Bova, who is an evolved cow, and her ward, Modred. An approaching storm forces Ben and Alicia to spend the night with Bova.Meanwhile, the Puppet Master has apparently been shrunk to the size of a toy soldier, and trapped in a toy box in Modred's room. He escapes, and finds that ben has also been shrunk. Before the two have much time to figure out what's going on, they are attacked by an army of Modred's toy soldiers...
