The man who hated everything

[mrosa]

J.M. DeMatteis' excellent origin for the Red Skull expanded on what Jack Kirby had already established and made him even more twisted and unredeemable. I love this Red Skull because it shows that from an early time there was something deeply wrong with his head. DeMatteis doesn't really try to psychoanalyse him away - he just writes him as being consumed by an incomprehensible hatred for all life, including his own, a hatred he then channeled into wonderfully horrible projects.









Rapist Red Skull is so appropriate, don't ask me why. Eventually he gets a job as a bellboy just as Adolf Hitler is rising to power.



Personally training him, Hitler turns Schmidt into the Red Skull and unleashes a new great evil who, in time, will surpass his Master. He cheerfully takes part in World War II, murdering entire populations and revelling in misery and suffering, and if it weren't for that pesky Captain American he would have conquered the world too. But all good things must end, so after the war he hides on an island. There he decides to raise an heir to pass on his evil and hatred to him, and takes a cleaning lady by force. Incidentally, he claims the cleaning lady looked like his mother - infer whatever you wish from that.

Things don't work out the way he planned them, though.



I loved it how this comes full circle from when his dad tried to kill him.

Time passes, his daughter grows into Sin, who's never managed to be as awesomely evil as her dad, but who can, right?

And there you have an excellent origin for Red Skull.

Comments

[donnblake]

I don't know, I've never been crazy about the idea of Red Skull having much of an origin before Hitler picked him out as a protege. The name, the way his face was never shown, the idea that before he became the Red Skull he had no identity, or at least he's completely separated himself from it. Plus, him being thirty-plus when Hitler picks him as a protege just seems weird.

I'm also not sure this is less psychoanalyzing than Testament- abusive father, womb fixation, abused becoming abuser...

[donnblake]

Not Testament, Incarnate.

[icon_uk]

Agreed, the Red Skull mattered only after meeting Hitler, as shown in not seeing his unmasked face.

[mrosa]

It's in the power of the narration. The Red Skull is giving a lot of information about himself, yes, but even he can't nail down what made him different from the others. He was an orphan; so were others who didn't turn into vicious mass murderers. Surely he was not the only victim of abuse there. What urged him to abandon the orphanage and embrace a life of vagrancy and crime? What made him seek a Master? What stopped him from killing his daughter? There are so many blind spots in his litany of facts that can't explain why he became the man he did. A life of abuse isn't an adequate enough explanation, unless you fancy pop psychology. There's something that makes him irrational and unexplainable. All the facts of his life in the end only prove there's a hidden aspect of humaness that we'll never understand. Without wanting to load my case, Red Skull is not dissimilar to Raskolnikov, who can't find a logical reason to kill the money-lender, after Sonya interrogates him, or to Joseh K's serenity in being executed by a faceless court.

And his diatribes express so much contempt and nihilism. There's something wonderfully exaggerated here, that evokes the best from Count of Lautréamont, but it's vibrant and feels honest even in its self-deprecating. Like in all the great villains, like a Iago or a Heathcliff, or their poor cousin Fantomas, there's a performer at work here, conscious that his evil is but a lowbrow form of poetry to entertain the masses. Even this rage is missing from Pak's castrated version. Like the dullest cinema verite, we follow this version from the exterior, plodding through no doubt meaningful silent panels, obediently ticking all the boxes in its straightforward explanation of evil, instead of piercing into the dazzling irrationality of a fictional personality and making the best of it, creatively speaking.

[espanolbot]

Parts of this are referenced in Incarnate, though the rape thing is handled differently. Namely he was staying with a Jewish family, mainly to avoid a streetgang he'd attacked with a knife when they tried to mug him, and they tried to take advantage of a Nazi-lead riot to rob the family's shop and attack the daughter, who'd they'd noticed while spying on Schimdt.

Johann stabbed the leader to death to defend the girl, who (having just seen her father possibly mobbed to death barely ten minutes before) comes to the conclusion that since Johann and the gang know each other, they must have been planning together all this time to rob her father's shop/attack her. Johann then knocks her out and robs the place anyway, figuring he might as well burn all of his bridges at once.

The explanation for this change was given in the trade,

"In Captain America 298, the Red Skull claims that as a young man, he killed a Jewih woman who refused his advances. In an early outline for Red Skull: Incarnate, Johann killed Emmy and her father. But as we worked on the story, we realised it made more sense and was more emotionally powerful for Johann to kill Emmy's attacker instead. We decided that the discrepancy with the previous story was acceptable; Schmidt is hadly a reliable narrator and in Captain America 298 is clearly pleased with the horrified response he gets from Steve Rogers as he tells is tale."

[crinos]

I'm personally amazed that the Red Skull can apparently remember all the way back to his birth. I mean screw Eidetic memory, that is just superhuman.

[espanolbot]

The writers of Incarnate decided to go with the theory he was being an unreliable narrator to mess with Steve Rogers, who he's telling the story too.

[mrosa]

What about The Red Skull's biography could mess up with Captain America's mind? Yes, I'm sure like any person with a modicum of decency, he's going to feel disgusted at a man gleefully narrating a string of murders and rapes, but then again, he's been to war, certainly witnessed worst first-hand, why should that affect him so much, and why would the Red Skull think it could?

Furthermore, The Red Skull had just delivered the mind-fuck of mind-fucks against Steve when he had his best friend's self-esteem reduced to nothing. And the point of the scene was that the Red Skull thought that was going to be their last meeting, that they were going to die together, and there was nothing else to hide from each other, hence confroting each other withou masks.

Pak's explanation is basically just the excuse of a man who can't come up with something better than his predecessor, so he has to wipe it out. At least DeMatteis improved on Kirby's version.

[crinos]

Well you have to admit "screwing with Cap for the Lulz" is a more plausible explanation than "Red Skull can remember being born."

[mrosa]

It's a red mask-wearing super-villain who inhaled toxic fumes that extended his life and once wielded a reality-warping cosmic cube. Of course it's plausible that he remembers everything since the womb.

[wizardru]

I assumed that the implication was that the Doctor told everyone what happened and that eventually that story came back to the Red Skull later.

Mind you, I think the big appeal of the Skull's primary origin was the simplicity of it. Becoming a horrific evil was just a matter of choice and few steps to the left, was the message. Even a lowly bellboy could rise to become one of the most dangerous and murderous men in the world. THAT was the danger of fascism.

Making the skull exceptionally evil or crazy beforehand isn't a bad story, but it's kind of a bad story choice in that it removes that message...which I rather think was the original intent.

[crinos]

No, Skull specifically says during the flashback that he can remember being born because of a "remarkable memory."

Though I would put that a bit past remarkable and right into HOLY CRAP.

[silicondream]

That last panel is hilarious. Skull's mugging like Scooby Doo while miming the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. His daughter is snoozing.

[crinos]

Yeah, if it weren't for the fact he is an evil nazi and is molding her into a sociopath who would one day unleash an evil God on Earth who would possess a bunch of people with magic hammers, it would almost be adorable.