Captain America (vol. 3) #14
Turnabout
Since his physical body was destroyed by an exploding Cosmic Cube, the Red Skull has been trapped in a hell of his own making. He has been reduced to a disembodied shadow and his mind has been living out his worst nightmare.[1]
In it, he is a lonely shoeshine boy working out of the Grand Hotel in Berlin. However, this is not the Germany of World War II, but a more contemporary setting where tourists from all over the world come to visit, giving him tips in various world currencies. In his own words, he shines their shoes while dreaming of bullets.[2]
Every day ends the same as the last, with the Red Skull toiling away in the laundry room, laundering people’s clothes and then ironing sheets. It’s during these time that he often loses thought of who he is or how he came to be here. However, he knows one thing for sure: This is hell.
One day, the hotel puts up a huge banner announcing an upcoming appearance of Captain America. In this dream world, Captain America is the one responsible for the “twisted liberalism” that has transformed the Germany the Red Skull loved in a multicultural metropolis. Every night he returns home and he sees how foreigners have made the Fatherland his home. Believing them all to be impure mongrels, he blames them for ruining the country he loves. Homeless, he spends his evenings sleeping in a dumpster. There he dreams about how things are supposed to be. He remembers how he was handpicked to become Adolf Hitler’s right hand man and how he became the most feared Nazi in all of Germany. This put him at odds with Captain America and the pair clashed over the years. In this fantasy, the Red Skull ultimately defeats his arch-nemesis. However, every time he has the hero at his mercy, the tables quickly turn and the Red Skull finds himself trapped in a Cosmic Cube — a prison of his own making.
His morning starts in its usual fashion, where the cooks in the Chinese restaurant next to his dumpster beat him up. When he arrives at the hotel, berate and scold him for not working fast enough.
Soon the day of Captain America’s arrival comes and as he stands in the crowd the Red Skull feels more alone than ever. That’s when a woman catches his eye and the two fall in love instantly. Her name is Eve and as she and the Red Skull spend more time together he finds a new joy. This all changes when the time comes to meet Eve’s parents. He is horrified and disgusted to discover that they are foreigners. In fact, as they make introductions the three remove their faces revealing nothing but blank surfaces underneath. The Red Skull returns their hospitality by beating Eve and her family to death.[3] Caught red handed, the Skull is chased into the streets by an angry mob who corners him and savagely beats him.
Somehow surviving, the Red Skull has decided to surrender to his fate and heads back to the Grand Hotel to pledge his loyalty to Captain America. What plays out is a scene similar to when the Red Skull took him under his wing. Captain America hands the Red Skull’s gun and orders him to shoot a subordinate. This time however, rather than comply with orders, the Red Skull turns the gun on Captain America and shoots him through the chest.
In the real world, this entire struggle has been helping the Red Skull reform his disembodied form. This is all observed by a man appearing to be Kang the Conqueror who had come to restore the Skull himself and recruit him.[4] He is impressed to see that the Skull is doing this through sheer will of his own. Not only is the Red Skull recreating his destroyed body, but he is also creating a new Cosmic Cube to grant him unlimited power. However, this time, the Skull makes the Cube a part of his body making it nearly impossible from separating him from his source of power.[5] Seeing all of this, Kang begins to realize that he might have made a terrible mistake as he has inadvertedly unleashed the greatest evil the world has ever known.
Recurring Characters
Red Skull, “Kang the Conqueror”
Continuity Notes
The Red Skull’s physical body was incinerated by an exploded Cosmic Cube back in Captain America #448. He has been a disembodied shadow ever since.
The Red Skull working a menial job at a hotel is a call back to the fact that when Adolf Hitler first discovered him, Johann Schmidt was a bellhop working at a hotel. As told in Tales of Suspense #66. It’s a mite bit more complicated than that, as we’ll later learn in Red Skull #1-5.
This brutal murder draws parallels from the Red Skull’s account of the time he fell in love with the daughter of a Jewish shopkeeper and how when she rebuffed his romantic advances he murdered her. This was told in Captain America #298. However, another account in Red Skull #2 states that he murdered the shopkeeper during a robbery gone wrong and spared the daughters life. Either way, Red Skull is a cowardly piece of shit.
This is not really Kang the Conqueror, but Korvac in disguise as we’ll learn in Captain America (vol. 3) #17.
In the past, whenever the Red Skull has wielded the Cosmic Cube he has usually been defeated by removing the cube from his possession as seen in Tales of Suspense #79-81 and Captain America #115-119.
Topical References
“Kang” states that the current year in the present day is taking place in is 1998. This date should be considered topical relative to the date of publication.
In his nightmare fantasy, the Red Skull mentions a number of different currencies he receives in tips. He mentions the Deutchmark and Franc, the former currencies of Germany and France respectively. These currencies have since been replaced by the Euro. However, the references to their old currencies is not necessarily a topical reference since the Skull’s nightmare world appears to be a multicultural version of 1930s Germany.
