Red Skull (Marvel)

"His eyes, unfathomably empty, devoid of all compassion... all humanity... No one has eyes like that... no one! All these months I've lived in a fool's paradise, refusing to believe his claim to be the real Red Skull, refusing to believe that my greatest enemy had found a way to cheat death... but he has. The Red Skull lives... God help us all."

- Captain America on Red Skull

"You are deluded, Captain. You pretend to be a simple soldier, but in reality you are just afraid to admit that we have left humanity behind. Unlike you, I embrace it proudly. Without fear!"

- Red Skull, to Captain America in Captain America - The First Avenger.

Red Skull (born Johann Schmidt) is a supervillain from the Marvel universe and the archenemy of Captain America.

Character Biography
The Red Skull's original name was Johann Schmidt and he was born in Germany. He eventually came to hate the human race. He was working as a bellhop in a hotel when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power. He was bringing food to the dictator's room when Hitler yelled at a gestapo agent that he could make the bellboy a better spy than he was. Hitler then saw the hatred in his face and decided to make Schmidt the perfect Nazi and his right-hand man. Hitler gave him a red, skull-like mask and named him Red Skull. The Skull was answerable only to Hitler himself.

Red Skull planned and took part in many espionage and terrorist activities during World War Two, and the United States created Captain America in response. In the final days of the war, Captain America and Red Skull confronted each other in the latter's hidden bunker under Berlin. The bunker collapsed, trapping Red Skull. Gases were released in the collapse, which put Red Skull into a state of suspended animation. His American nemesis was also trapped in a similar state later on, albeit frozen in arctic ice. Both individuals were revived in the 1960s, and they continue to fight each other today. During this period, Red Skull was exposed to one of his own gases, which twisted and deformed his face so it took on the appearance of his mask.

Red Skull once came into possession of the Cosmic Cube, a device that could alter reality to the user's wishes. The Skull used it to make himself ruler of the world, but was eventually thwarted by the New Avengers and reality was reset. He was ressurected by Arnim Zola who has since then tranfered his mind after physical death and recently tranfered it into a body identical to Zola giving him a form of immortality due to mind transfer.

Because he is a Nazi, even other villains don't like him. An example is when he was confronted by Magneto, himself a Holocaust survivor, and was trapped in rubble for days by the Master of Magnetism. Even the Joker, the insane archnemesis of Batman, is horrified that he was working with the Red Skull (during a Marvel/DC crossover), saying, "I may be a criminal lunatic, but I am an American criminal lunatic!"

Recently a revived Red Skull formed the S-Men and became the antithesis of the now deceased Charles Xavier, stealing his body and taking the mutant's brain as his own - likely developing the same pyschic abilities as Xavier in the process but dedicating himself to eradicating mutants.

In Other Media

 * Red_Skull_Hugo_Weaving.jpg Skull appears in various episodes of the Captain America segment of The Marvel Superheroes
 * the Skull also appears in the 1981 Spider-Man cartoon in the epsiode, The Capture of Captain America, voiced by Peter Cullen.
 * Cullen reprises the role in the banned Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends episode, Dawn of the Red Skull.
 * In the 1990 Captain America movie, the Red Skull is played by Scott Paulin. In this version, The Skull is an Italian Facist named Tadzio de Santis and also a recipenient of the Super Solider Serum.
 * The Skull appears various times in the 90's Spider-Man cartoon, voiced by Earl Boen. Here, he was trapped in a time vortex with his hated nemesis, and is the father of Electro. He also was one of the villains in the Secret Wars storyline.
 * In the unproduced Captain America animated series, the Red Skull would have been the main villain.
 * The Red Skull appears in the current Avengers series, voiced by Steven Jay Blum
 * Red Skull has appeared in Captain America: the First Avenger, and served as the main antagonist played by Hugo Weaving. He leads the HYDRA organization which is temporally a secret research division of the Nazi regime, but still his followers. In the end, after a fight with Captain America, he is either destroyed or transported to parts unknown when he attempts to handle a powerful terrasect. It is implied that he is incinerated and his remains are transported to another dimension, as a portal opens and the tesseract burns through the floor of the ship.