| Puppetman | |
|---|---|
| Wild Cards character | |
| First appearance | Wild Cards (1987) |
| Created by | Stephen Leigh |
Puppetman, the alias of Gregg Hartmann, a U.S. Senator (D-NY) and Candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, is a fictional character from the Wild Cards series of books. He first appeared in the story "Strings" by Stephen Leigh in the first book in the series, and plays an important role in events throughout the series. Gregg Hartman shows the world the face of a crusading, man-of-the-people politician, who fights for the rights of the downtrodden, particularly Jokers. However, Hartmann is secretly an Ace possessed of mind control powers. Hartmann refers to these powers, and the desire he gets to use them, as "Puppetman" and sees them as almost a separate entity.
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Hartmann himself is a victim of the wild card, an Ace with the ability to sense and manipulate the emotions of others. He first discovered this power when he was eleven years old; he had a crush on a teenage girl named Andrea Whitman, and wanted to find a way to hurt her for ignoring him. He took his first puppet that day, Roger Pellman, a mentally deficient fourteen year old, and began stoking Pellman's anger, lust and rage until Pellman raped and murdered Andrea, with Gregg feeling everything his puppet felt.
This incident fractured the boy's fragile psyche, with pleasure, hate, guilt, shame, fear, and sex all jumbled together in his already twisted mind. He could not bear to think of these horrific actions as his own doing, so he created the Puppetman: another person in his mind, and the one he blamed for all the things he'd done... and all he would continue to do.
Hartman became addicted to "feeding" on the negative emotions and psychic pain of others. For years, he both reveled in, and was repulsed by, the many violent crimes and atrocities he committed by proxy. He used his power of emotional influence to become a successful politician; he could make anyone his "puppet" simply through brief physical contact, and a politician shakes a lot of hands.
Hartmann became overconfident of his control over others, when in fact he could not even control himself. Puppetman was becoming an independent, and demanding, force in his mind, constantly hungering for more. At times things spiralled out of his hands; in one case, he touched off a riot, and the resulting overwhelming emotional feedback caused him to have an embarrassing public breakdown which cost him the Presidency.
In the sixth volume of the Wild Cards series, Ace in the Hole (1990), the assassin Demise is hired to kill Sen. Hartmann. Demise's own ace abilities allow him to kill by locking eyes with his intended victim and telepathically projecting the memory of his death into their mind. Amid the chaos generated by Hartmann's manipulation of the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, Demise got close enough to his target to initiate, but not complete, his death-stare. The result was that Puppetman, who was dominant at the time, was destroyed, leaving behind only the normal half of Hartmann's personality. Hartmann resolved to undo the damage caused by Puppetman, but before he could begin Dr. Tachyon telepathically coerced Hartmann into the embarrassing breakdown which cost him the Democratic nomination.
Afterwards, Hartmann is jumped into the body of a caterpillar-like joker. He swings from villain to victim to hero, trying to redeem himself of the horrible deeds he has committed.
Over the course of his career Puppetman has manipulated literally hundreds of individuals, some to a greater extent than others. The following is a brief list of his many puppets: