Captain America #227
The Deadly Gauntlet
After restoring his powers, Captain America discovers that the Red Skull has some how transformed everyone aboard the SHIELD helicarrier into slaves that bare his trademark skull-face. Worse, Nick Fury has been taken hostage, forcing Captain America to fight through a gauntlet of Red Skull slave and the defenses of the SHIELD helicarrier.
While this is going on, the Red Skull has had Nick Fury shackled beneath a magnifying prism that will burn the master spy alive when it reflects the rays from the rising sun.
When Captain America fights his way into the room where Nick is being held, he finds the Red Skull waiting for him at a banquet table set up for their meeting. The Skull then shows Cap the device that has transformed everyone into his slaves and says that the only way he can take it from him and save Fury is to kill the Red Skull.
With his shield caught in a magnetic barrier and the sun beginning to rise, the Red Skull taunts Captain America by saying that the hero will be helpless to stop Fury’s death just like his partner Bucky in World War II.[1] Hearing Fury’s screams of agony and the Red Skull’s taunts seem to psychologically break Captain America who crimples to the ground. However, this is a ruse to goad the Skull into coming close enough for Cap to snatch away the device. Destroying the Skull’s Death’s Head satellite all of the transformed SHIELD agents return to normal.[2] This includes the man who was claiming to be the Red Skull, who turns out to have been a transformed Nick Fury. As it turns out, Captain America deduced that the real Skull was trying to trick him into murdering Fury. What tipped him off was that the “Fury” caught in the deathtrap didn’t sweat despite the immense heat, revealing that he was nothing a Life Model Decoy.
Recurring Characters
Captain America, Red Skull, SHILED (Nick Fury, Dum Dum Dugan)
Continuity Notes
Per Avengers #4, everyone believes that Bucky had died in 1945 when a drone loaded with explosives went off. In reality, Bucky survived and was transformed into the Russian assassin known as the Winter Solider. Captain America will not learn this truth until Captain America (vol. 5) #14.
The Death’s Head satellite was built for the Red Skull by the Hate-Monger as we’ll learn in Super-Villain Team-Up #16.
The Dugan LMD Conundrum
Among the SHIELD agents that were transformed by the Red Skull’s Death’s Head satellite was Dum Dum Dugan. This is interesting as years after this story in Original Sins #5 and New Avengers (vol. 4) #17 it is revealed that Dugan’s body was in suspended animation and his intelligence was remotely piloting a Life Model Decoy. This raises some interesting questions about the Red Skull’s Death’s Head satellite and its ability to transform people into Skull faced slaves.
Namely, the Red Skull was able to transform Dugan, whose body was an LMD at the time. However, the Nick Fury LMD that was used as a decoy later on in this story was not changed.
I think that Occam’s Razor works best here in that the Red Skull had to manually select who he transformed into a slave baring his face. The reason why Dugan was transformed and not the Nick Fury LMD is simply because the Skull chose Dugan as a target thinking he was a normal person and the Death’s Head satellite didn’t change the Fury LMD because he had no need to do so.
That said, per Secret Warriors and Original Sin, Nick Fury secretly had access to more sophisticated technology due to his association with the Brotherhood of the Shield and being the Man on the Wall. As such, it could be safe to assume that the Death’s Head satellite worked on Dugan because the LMD his mind is piloting is much more sophisticated and able to more closely imitate human biological function because it is more advanced than the units being used by SHIELD at the time of this story.
