When the Red Skull was captured by Magneto
Sep. 4th, 2014 01:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_daily(Triggers: multiple mentions of suicide, with a character actually being encouraged to kill himself and wanting to die. He doesn't, for what that's worth. Also trigger warnings for imprisonment involving prolonged sensory deprivation and starvation--while those things aren't among the trigger tags, I can certainly imagine how they could be triggers for anybody having gone through certain ordeals. Finally, there is some dialogue here which could potentially bring back memories of child abuse.)
One page from Captain America #367, two pages from a five page backup story in Captain America #369 and seven pages from Captain America #370.
Scans have already been posted of Magneto vs. the Red Skull (or to be more accurate, Magneto hunting the Skull while having to deal with every obstacle and distraction the latter can throw at him). The links to those images seem to be broken, and I thought of posting new images, but decided to play it safe and wait until I got the okay from a mod here. For now, I will just post what happened afterwards.
To briefly recap: after meeting the Red Skull, Magneto wants to know if he's the same Skull who was with the Nazis in World War Two, which the Skull admits. Even though the Skull didn't actually run the death camps, he still willingly served Hitler and Magneto wants to know what he has to say for himself. The Skull stalls by giving him a "We're not really so different" speech, since both of them want to see their respective "master race" inherit the Earth, before trying to kill him. Long story short, it doesn't work, the Skull tries to get away but fails, and the issue ends with this page:
I remember being pretty shocked by Magneto going this far, because I had been familiarizing myself with Claremont's version of the character for over a year. Based on what I'd read in Claremont's Uncanny X-Men, I honestly never thought Magneto capable of something like this. Killing people, sure, but leaving them to what was arguably a fate worse than death? Even if they were somebody like the Red Skull? Other than that I thought Gruenwald had Mags acting entirely in-character, but I thought this was uncharacteristically cruel of him.
Of course, this was before I saw what Magneto did when Claremont turned him back into a villain in the first few issues of adjectiveless X-Men, and long before I saw what Grant Morrison did with Magneto. (Grant Morrison has written a lot of good stuff over his career, but dismissing Magneto as a "a mad old terrorist twat", and irredeemably evil? Come on Grant, you should have known better.)
Ahem. Anyway, my younger self waited as months passed (even though it was only two months, it seemed longer) without seeing any more of the Skull. Finally, in Cap #369, I read the backup story "Out Of His Skull", written by Gruenwald and drawn by a pre-Spidey & Thunderbolts Mark Bagley.
It begins with the Skull sitting in the darkness, eyes closed. According to the captions, time no longer has any meaning for him, along with light and sound; the only things real to him are the darkness surrounding him and his hunger. He has given up trying to guess how long he's been locked away. He has given up trying to leap for the trapdoor, since no matter how hard he tries he cannot get ahold of it. He has given up screaming, pacing, beating his fists on the wall, and by now he isn't even bothering to drink the water left for him by Magneto.
Sensory deprivation is beginning to take its toll on the Skull, who first thinks he hears a ringing sound, then scraping noises above him, and finally a voice saying his name. "Johann?"
As he lands on his hands and knees, the Skull curses himself for chasing a hallucination. A second later he sees in front of him the toes of a pair of jackboots, and another voice orders him to "Lick them, lackey!" He looks up into the face of none other than Adolph Hitler, who tells him that the Skull has forgotten it was he, Hitler, who made the Skull what he became. Hitler adds that the Skull has also forgotten how he betrayed Hitler, by twisting the Nazi dream to his own selfish purposes before abandoning it entirely. Hitler says that he's heard the Skull now considers himself the very embodiment of human evil, and contemptuously tells him he's nothing more than a pretender. A pretender who will never be anything more than what Hitler made him. He will never surpass his master; he's nothing more than a lowly bellhop. Hitler strikes the Skull across the face with his riding crop.
Then Hitler turns his back on the Skull and walks away, remarking that he committed suicide in a bunker very much like this one, and that he thinks the Skull will do the same. Like master, like pupil, after all.
The Skull picks himself up and shouts at Hitler (who has now disappeared into the darkness) that he flatters himself, that he was a pathetic teacher and a pompous speech-maker. The Skull taught himself everything he needed to know, he cries. He is his own master!
But then he hears another voice. A voice telling him he was a bad son, a bad pupil...
...and also a bad father, as his daughter Sin emerges from the darkness. She could have been his masterpiece, she says, his greatest achievement and his legacy...if not for the Skull resenting her for being born female and all but abandoning her. He had others raise her, with her barely seeing him for five minutes a week. When she wasn't strapped into one of his machines, she was enduring "every imaginable sort of abuse" from the people he left her with.
Oh, Sin understands the reasons. The Skull probably thought that neglect would build her character, the same way that neglect had built his. But she still hates him for it. She tells him he will die soon, down here, and then everything he owns will become hers. She puts a shard of glass in his hand, slicing it open, and encourages him to use the "present" she has given him.
As Sin disappears, the Skull is astonished that he actually feels the shard in his hand...but how can that be, when none of this is real? His thoughts are interrupted by another voice. The voice of Arnim Zola, who tells him that his "ungrateful whelp" has a good point, and that "Der Fuehrer" does too, as well as the Skull's father.
Zola says the Skull shouldn't waste any more time; he should hurry up and die, because Zola has another clone body for his consciousness to transfer into upon the demise of his current body. And hey, his new body will be better, because he won't have that disfigured face any longer! In fact, it will be perfect. Well, Zola admits that there's "a little loss of fidelity" after every transfer, but the Skull surely won't notice any difference. As Zola says he has to get back to his lab, the Skull cries after him that he doesn't understand what he's asking; as he knows from the last time, dying is agony! Zola responds by saying sorry, but it's the only way he's ever going to get out of his prison.
Those loyal to the Skull have no luck tracking him or Magneto down, until Crossbones remembers a psychic he met during the "Bloodstone Hunt" story arc. They pay him a visit and pay him a hundred thousand dollars to locate the Skull for them. They make it clear that turning down the job is not an option if he wants to remain healthy.
Well, that's to be expected; pretty much all of New Jersey reeks of death. :p
Even knowing what the Skull had done before this, and knowing the kinds of things he would do in the future (there's one thing in particular he threatened to do to Mother Night that absolutely sickened me just by reading about it in a summary. I'm not going to describe it since I think even a description could be triggery, other than to say that he made this particular threat in response to her being late for a meeting, and knowing the Skull I'm sure it wasn't an idle threat), I could not help but feel sorry for him after seeing those eyes, and I still can't.
They bring him to Skullhouse. Mother Night says they need to get him in bed ASAP and have him treated for dehydration and who knows what else, but Crossbones insists on giving him a tour of the house first, to remind him of all of his accomplishments. It's his spirit that needs restoration before his body, 'Bones says.
They lure Cap to Skullhouse with an anonymous tip to his hotline. Diamondback insists on going there with him. Shortly after arriving the two of them have to fight to survive against traps and hostile robots, with cameras catching all of it for the Skull to watch in his bedroom.
Judging by the subtle differences between the reflection of Cap in the Skull's eyes and Cap's actual face in the last panel, it always seemed to me like the Skull saw something that wasn't there. I.e., he thinks that his archenemy is standing over him and glaring down at him in pure hatred, but in reality Cap is just plain shocked and isn't feeling the tiniest bit of malice at that particular moment.
It makes me wonder if part of the reason the Skull is so monstrous is because he sees hatred where there is none, potential threats where none exist. And on the flipside, if he is incapable of seeing things like love or kindness in other human beings. If in his vision, everybody he meets is a potential enemy, and nobody truly cares about him, or about anybody else for that matter, not really.
Then again, maybe it's just the result of him being delirious and I'm reading too much into it. I don't know.
One page from Captain America #367, two pages from a five page backup story in Captain America #369 and seven pages from Captain America #370.
Scans have already been posted of Magneto vs. the Red Skull (or to be more accurate, Magneto hunting the Skull while having to deal with every obstacle and distraction the latter can throw at him). The links to those images seem to be broken, and I thought of posting new images, but decided to play it safe and wait until I got the okay from a mod here. For now, I will just post what happened afterwards.
To briefly recap: after meeting the Red Skull, Magneto wants to know if he's the same Skull who was with the Nazis in World War Two, which the Skull admits. Even though the Skull didn't actually run the death camps, he still willingly served Hitler and Magneto wants to know what he has to say for himself. The Skull stalls by giving him a "We're not really so different" speech, since both of them want to see their respective "master race" inherit the Earth, before trying to kill him. Long story short, it doesn't work, the Skull tries to get away but fails, and the issue ends with this page:
I remember being pretty shocked by Magneto going this far, because I had been familiarizing myself with Claremont's version of the character for over a year. Based on what I'd read in Claremont's Uncanny X-Men, I honestly never thought Magneto capable of something like this. Killing people, sure, but leaving them to what was arguably a fate worse than death? Even if they were somebody like the Red Skull? Other than that I thought Gruenwald had Mags acting entirely in-character, but I thought this was uncharacteristically cruel of him.
Of course, this was before I saw what Magneto did when Claremont turned him back into a villain in the first few issues of adjectiveless X-Men, and long before I saw what Grant Morrison did with Magneto. (Grant Morrison has written a lot of good stuff over his career, but dismissing Magneto as a "a mad old terrorist twat", and irredeemably evil? Come on Grant, you should have known better.)
Ahem. Anyway, my younger self waited as months passed (even though it was only two months, it seemed longer) without seeing any more of the Skull. Finally, in Cap #369, I read the backup story "Out Of His Skull", written by Gruenwald and drawn by a pre-Spidey & Thunderbolts Mark Bagley.
It begins with the Skull sitting in the darkness, eyes closed. According to the captions, time no longer has any meaning for him, along with light and sound; the only things real to him are the darkness surrounding him and his hunger. He has given up trying to guess how long he's been locked away. He has given up trying to leap for the trapdoor, since no matter how hard he tries he cannot get ahold of it. He has given up screaming, pacing, beating his fists on the wall, and by now he isn't even bothering to drink the water left for him by Magneto.
Sensory deprivation is beginning to take its toll on the Skull, who first thinks he hears a ringing sound, then scraping noises above him, and finally a voice saying his name. "Johann?"
As he lands on his hands and knees, the Skull curses himself for chasing a hallucination. A second later he sees in front of him the toes of a pair of jackboots, and another voice orders him to "Lick them, lackey!" He looks up into the face of none other than Adolph Hitler, who tells him that the Skull has forgotten it was he, Hitler, who made the Skull what he became. Hitler adds that the Skull has also forgotten how he betrayed Hitler, by twisting the Nazi dream to his own selfish purposes before abandoning it entirely. Hitler says that he's heard the Skull now considers himself the very embodiment of human evil, and contemptuously tells him he's nothing more than a pretender. A pretender who will never be anything more than what Hitler made him. He will never surpass his master; he's nothing more than a lowly bellhop. Hitler strikes the Skull across the face with his riding crop.
Then Hitler turns his back on the Skull and walks away, remarking that he committed suicide in a bunker very much like this one, and that he thinks the Skull will do the same. Like master, like pupil, after all.
The Skull picks himself up and shouts at Hitler (who has now disappeared into the darkness) that he flatters himself, that he was a pathetic teacher and a pompous speech-maker. The Skull taught himself everything he needed to know, he cries. He is his own master!
But then he hears another voice. A voice telling him he was a bad son, a bad pupil...
...and also a bad father, as his daughter Sin emerges from the darkness. She could have been his masterpiece, she says, his greatest achievement and his legacy...if not for the Skull resenting her for being born female and all but abandoning her. He had others raise her, with her barely seeing him for five minutes a week. When she wasn't strapped into one of his machines, she was enduring "every imaginable sort of abuse" from the people he left her with.
Oh, Sin understands the reasons. The Skull probably thought that neglect would build her character, the same way that neglect had built his. But she still hates him for it. She tells him he will die soon, down here, and then everything he owns will become hers. She puts a shard of glass in his hand, slicing it open, and encourages him to use the "present" she has given him.
As Sin disappears, the Skull is astonished that he actually feels the shard in his hand...but how can that be, when none of this is real? His thoughts are interrupted by another voice. The voice of Arnim Zola, who tells him that his "ungrateful whelp" has a good point, and that "Der Fuehrer" does too, as well as the Skull's father.
Zola says the Skull shouldn't waste any more time; he should hurry up and die, because Zola has another clone body for his consciousness to transfer into upon the demise of his current body. And hey, his new body will be better, because he won't have that disfigured face any longer! In fact, it will be perfect. Well, Zola admits that there's "a little loss of fidelity" after every transfer, but the Skull surely won't notice any difference. As Zola says he has to get back to his lab, the Skull cries after him that he doesn't understand what he's asking; as he knows from the last time, dying is agony! Zola responds by saying sorry, but it's the only way he's ever going to get out of his prison.
Those loyal to the Skull have no luck tracking him or Magneto down, until Crossbones remembers a psychic he met during the "Bloodstone Hunt" story arc. They pay him a visit and pay him a hundred thousand dollars to locate the Skull for them. They make it clear that turning down the job is not an option if he wants to remain healthy.
Well, that's to be expected; pretty much all of New Jersey reeks of death. :p
Even knowing what the Skull had done before this, and knowing the kinds of things he would do in the future (there's one thing in particular he threatened to do to Mother Night that absolutely sickened me just by reading about it in a summary. I'm not going to describe it since I think even a description could be triggery, other than to say that he made this particular threat in response to her being late for a meeting, and knowing the Skull I'm sure it wasn't an idle threat), I could not help but feel sorry for him after seeing those eyes, and I still can't.
They bring him to Skullhouse. Mother Night says they need to get him in bed ASAP and have him treated for dehydration and who knows what else, but Crossbones insists on giving him a tour of the house first, to remind him of all of his accomplishments. It's his spirit that needs restoration before his body, 'Bones says.
They lure Cap to Skullhouse with an anonymous tip to his hotline. Diamondback insists on going there with him. Shortly after arriving the two of them have to fight to survive against traps and hostile robots, with cameras catching all of it for the Skull to watch in his bedroom.
Judging by the subtle differences between the reflection of Cap in the Skull's eyes and Cap's actual face in the last panel, it always seemed to me like the Skull saw something that wasn't there. I.e., he thinks that his archenemy is standing over him and glaring down at him in pure hatred, but in reality Cap is just plain shocked and isn't feeling the tiniest bit of malice at that particular moment.
It makes me wonder if part of the reason the Skull is so monstrous is because he sees hatred where there is none, potential threats where none exist. And on the flipside, if he is incapable of seeing things like love or kindness in other human beings. If in his vision, everybody he meets is a potential enemy, and nobody truly cares about him, or about anybody else for that matter, not really.
Then again, maybe it's just the result of him being delirious and I'm reading too much into it. I don't know.
Tags:
- char: captain america/steve rogers,
- char: crossbones/brock rumlow,
- char: diamondback/rachel leighton,
- char: magneto/erik magnus lehnsherr,
- char: red skull/johann schmidt,
- creator: mark bagley,
- creator: mark gruenwald,
- creator: ron lim,
- trigger warning: child abuse,
- trigger warning: suicide/self harm
no subject
Date: 2014-09-04 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-04 06:20 pm (UTC)That's Cap for you: Loved by his friends, respected by his enemies.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-04 07:14 pm (UTC)If I recall Uncanny Avengers correctly, the Xavier-Red Skull is a clone of Red Skull who had been in hibernation since WWII? Actual Red Skull is still in a robot body somewhere, right??
no subject
Date: 2014-09-04 07:21 pm (UTC)I'm sure sooner or later the original will come back having survived yet again since that's pretty much his thing in comics aside from being the one bad guy so reviled that almost no other villain will team up with him..
no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-04 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-04 07:46 pm (UTC)He asked to see Captain America and wanted him sent for. The Red Skull wouldn't send for Captain America, he'd order him captured and brought to him.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 04:00 am (UTC)http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix2/mothernight.htm
no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-04 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-04 08:34 pm (UTC)Perhaps this was meant as some kind of pleasantry, but it strikes me as pointless and really quite unpleasant.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-04 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-04 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 04:18 am (UTC)The only explanation I can think of is that he was still sort of trying to be a good guy at this point, maybe.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 04:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 10:24 am (UTC)Not so with the Skull, in fact, 'Cap' is the only one to encourage him to come through!
Skull and Cap has a pretty interesting dynamic when writers want to explore it.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 01:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 02:48 pm (UTC)well yeah, thats racism for you, hell discrimination in general really.
and this is quite well done.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-12 06:50 am (UTC)