MARVEL SUPER VILLAINS: RED SKULL
Here is a series dedicated to the kid in me. All things super hero. To this day I still have my comic book collection, each placed in plastic bags and boxed in my closet. With this summer being the Summer of Super Heroes in the movies, I thought this might be a fun series to put together. PLEASE NOTE: This is an industrial park and can be muggle heavy at times. Weekends would be the easiest time to gather the caches, though anytime would be fine. Parking should not be an issue and the critter factor should be low. I hope you enjoy this series.
The Red Skull is a name shared by several fictional characters, all supervillains from the Marvel Comics universe. All incarnations of the character are enemies of Captain America, other superheroes, and the United States in general.
The first two Red Skulls are Nazi agents and the third is a Soviet agent. The Red Skull was first introduced in Captain America Comics #1 in 1941. The first Red Skull (George Maxon) to appear in comics was an American industrialist turned Nazi saboteur. Maxon turned out to be an agent of the true Red Skull (Johann Schmidt), considered (according to S.H.I.E.L.D.) as one of the greatest threats to humanity, and a long-time archenemy of Captain America. The third Red Skull (Albert Malik) is best known for causing the deaths of the parents of Peter Parker, and thus orphaning the boy who would become Spider-Man. The Red Skull was ranked number 21 on Wizard Magazine's Top 100 Greatest Villains Ever list and was also ranked as IGN's 14th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.
Although the Red Skull has no superhuman abilities, he possesses an intellect and inventive genius on the level of supervillains such as Doctor Doom, and is a highly gifted subversive strategist and political operative. At one point, the Red Skull's mind inhabited a body cloned from Captain America's, and hence possessed the mutagenic alterations induced by the Super-Soldier formula. He was thus endowed with a body that was in perfect physical condition, with strength, speed, durability, agility, dexterity, reflexes, coordination, balance, and physical endurance that exceeded that of any Olympic athlete who ever performed. Despite the scar tissue covering his face and head, his senses were still above-average. He has been shown as a superb martial artist, though he was never on par with Captain America himself; he was originally trained by German athletes appointed by Hitler, and is heavily trained as a skilled marksman with various forms of handguns, and well-versed in the use of fire arms and explosives.
While sharing Alexander Lukin's body, he lost his superhuman abilities. Since then he resides in one of the android bodies engineered by Arnim Zola, with enhanced endurance and resilience.
He typically armed himself with a trick cigarette that could fire fatal poison gas — his trademark "Dust of Death" — toward his victim. The "Dust of Death" is a red powder which kills a victim within seconds of skin contact. The powder causes the skin of the victim's head to shrivel, tighten, and take on a red discoloration, while causing the hair to fall out. Hence the victim's head resembles a "red skull". He also carries a large arsenal of conventional and advanced fire arms and explosives.