<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Red Skull
Gender	Male
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Origin	Germany
First Appearance	Golden Age--Captain America Comics #1 (1941) (Considered a Skull impersonator) Captain America #7 (Actual Red Skull) Silver Age -- Tales of Suspense #s 65 (Impersonator) and 66 (First actual Silver Age appearance).
Creator(s)	Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
Alter ego	Johann Shmidt
Aliases	Mr. Smith, many others.
Abilities	Strategic and political master, trained at hand-to-hand combat, expert marksman
Affiliations	The Red Skull has entered into conspiracies with Hydra, A.I.M., Doctor Doom, and many other villains and terrorist organizations.

The Red Skull is the arch nemesis of Captain America, a fictional comic book superhero owned by Marvel Comics. He is one of the most hateful and genuinely scary villains to come out of both the Golden Age of Comics and the Silver Age of Comics as well.

The Red Skull was the most feared symbol of the Nazi party during the 1940s. He was created by Adolf Hitler himself as a kind of protégé in Nazi leadership. He always wore a rubber Red Skull head mask, and became a face that symbolized the ruthlessness of Nazi power. Eventually, Hitler himself would grow to fear him. He engaged in terrorist and sabotage activities in the United States even before we entered the war. He became a symbol of hate and fear both in Europe and in the United States. The propaganda effect was extreme. It is said that the United States Military created Captain America as kind of an American response to the Red Skull.

Like Captain America, the Red Skull survives today due to being accidentally placed in suspended animation. In a battle with Captain America and his teen sidekick Bucky in his secret Berlin bunker towards the end of the war, a grenade went off, seriously injuring the Skull and burying him under debris. Warning Captain America that he would have the ultimate revenge because his plans would outlive him, the bunker was then hit by a bomb dropped by an Allied plane. The bunker collapsed. Cap and Bucky barely escaped alive, and it was presumed that the Skull was finished, buried forever. However, support pillars fell in such a way as to create a pocket of safety for the Nazi’s body. The cave-in released experimental gas from canisters in the bunker that somehow placed the Red Skull in suspended animation.

The Red Skull was such a feared symbol, that he has been impersonated by many over the years. Due to the rubber head mask, it was easy for the Skull to arrange for himself to be in two places at once. During the 1950s, the Soviet Union created their own Red Skull as a psychological tactic against the United States. Years later, the real Red Skull would have the "Soviet" Skull killed.

The Red Skull was found and revived decades later by a subversive organization called Them, which turned out to be a ruling body of the international terrorist organization known as Hydra. The Red Skull was loose again.

The Skull has had many fabled battles with Captain America since his return. Before his “death” at the end of the war, he hid armored weapons of destruction called Sleepers, each designed to destroy the world if Nazi Germany did not win the war. Captain America faced and destroyed the first three of these before the Skull was revived, and then faced the last two, along with the Red Skull, after his enemy’s revival. The Red Skull also got his hands on the Cosmic Cube, a device accidentally created by the Hydra offshoot Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) that could turn thought into reality. He activated a colony of Nazis that he established during the war on a place he called Exile Island. He established a relationship with a woman he had fathered during the war, who would become known as Mother Superior, and brought her in on his schemes. He gained a deadly sidekick called Crossbones, who would also become one of Captain America’s most tenacious foes. All of these plans (and many others) would eventually be defeated by Captain America.

At one point the gas that preserved the Red Skull’s body all these decades began to fail, and his body began to deteriorate and die. The Skull’s henchman, mad biologist Arnin Zola, created a clone of Captain America’s body, and placed the Red Skull’s consciousness inside it. As a result, the Red Skull was now Captain America’s physical equal, sustained by the same super-soldier formula that made Steve Rogers Captain America in the first place. Later, the body would become infected by a poisonous red dust that would cause his head to appear as a giant red skull, giving him a “Red Skull” in reality.

Later, when the Red Skull’s body is again destroyed in a battle for a new Cosmic Cube, his consciousness is placed into the body of Aleksander Lukin. Warring with Lukin’s consciousness within the body, the Red Skull succeeds in taking over the body, to use it for his own ends.

Today the Red Skull is the author of many conspiracies that he hopes will eventually corrupt the powerful democracy that the United States has become.

Recently, at the end of the Civil War crossover limited series, the Red Skull arranged to have Captain America assassinated while in federal custody. He has Crossbones shoot at him when he comes into court and, in the ensuing chaos, murdered by one of his Cap's best friends, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Sharon Carter, under the influence of mind control expert Doctor Faustus. This plan seems to have succeeded, and the world mourns famous superhero. It remains to be seen whether or not Captain America is really gone forever.

Character Origin

Decades ago in Germany, Johann Schmidt lives in an atmosphere of hate and fear since before he is born. His mother Martha is beaten and abused by his father, the often drunk Hermann Schmidt. When his mother dies in child birth, Hermann is driven mad by the death of a person he both loved and hated. He tries to kill his infant son, but the boy is saved by the doctor who brought him into the world. The next day, Hermann kills himself.

Johann is placed in a local orphanage, where he leads a lonely miserable existence. At the age of seven, he runs away and survives on the street doing petty crimes and menial jobs. A decade or so later, he gets a job working for a Jewish shop keeper, whose daughter Esther is one of the first to be kind to him. When he tries to make love to her, she rejects him. Seized with anger, Johann brutally murders her. He flees the scene in terror, but also feels ecstatic and rejuvenated. This is the first time he has given vent to the anger and hatred that has been building up inside him all his life.

Later, Johann gets a job as a bell boy in a hotel. Adolph Hitler, the new leader of the third Reich, stays in the Hotel one evening, and Johann is sent up to his room with refreshments. When he enters the room, Hitler is berating his Gestapo chief for letting a spy escape. When Johann hears Hitler’s voice, he feels he has finally found someone to emulate, and show him the way to power.

Meanwhile, Hitler rants, “I could teach that bellboy to do a better job than you.” He looks over at the boy, and stops. He sees something in his face, a true hatred and contempt for humanity, that reminds him of himself. Hitler decides to train the boy to be “the perfect Nazi” and that he would one day become his right hand man.

After some training, Hitler gives him a red skull rubber mask, and renames him the Red Skull. He would undertake special missions, and would have absolute authority, answerable only to Hitler himself. By the end of the war, Hitler would learn to fear the power of the Red Skull as well.