• A Remarkable intensity poison known as the “Dust of Death” that caused those failing an Endurance FEAT to die, with their heads changing to resemble a red skull. He could fire the dust in a pellet form from a specially designed handgun.
• The “Skull Infection” was a mutated disease of Remarkable intensity that caused any victim failing an Endurance FEAT to resemble the Red Skull and become more susceptible to his Mind Control devices (—3CS on all Psyche FEATs.)
• He made use of various Amazing Mind Control devices.
• Pre-programmed war machines (known as “Sleepers”) were created by the Third Reich to be used against their allies in the event of their defeat. These machines, which were controlled by the Red Skull for his plans of world conquest, have Monstrous physical stats and Incredible material strength.

Johann ran away from the orphanage when he was seven years old and lived in the streets as a beggar and a thief. As he grew older, he worked at various menial jobs but spent most of his time in prison for crimes ranging from vagrancy to theft.

As a young man, Schmidt was from time to time employed by a Jewish shopkeeper, whose daughter, Esther, treated Schmidt kindly. Seized with passion for her, Schmidt tried to force himself upon her, only to be rejected. In unthinking fury, Schmidt murdered her, and discovered an outlet for the rage at the world that had been building up in him throughout his young life.

After the Nazis came to power in Germany, Schmidt was working in a hotel where he encountered the dictator of Germany’s Third Reich, Adolf Hitler. Hitler declared that he would make the bellboy into a “perfect Nazi” who would serve as his right-hand man. Schmidt eagerly agreed to do whatever Hitler wished.

Hitler personally took over Schmidt’s training. He gave Schmidt a lifelike red skull-like head mask and named him the Red Skull. The Skull was answerable only to Hitler himself.

The Skull undertook a wide variety of missions for Hitler, most of which involved the Skull’s specialty, the spreading of terror. In the early 1 940s, the United States government created the costumed persona of Captain America so that there would be a costumed counterpart to the Red Skull.

Hitler gave his protégé free rein to fight his fight around the world. The Skull was particularly interested in procuring technological weapons that could be used for the purposes of subversion and warfare. During the war, he stole plans for the “nullatron,” a device that could control human minds, adapted a space-warping device developed by the cyborg scientist codenamed Brain Drain, and commissioned Nazi scientists to develop a projector which could encircle and suspend sections of cities within spheres of energy.

After the renowned military officer Baron Wolfgang von Strucker had a falling out with Hitler, the Red Skull sent Strucker to Japan to found an organization that would prepare the way for takeovers in the Far East under the Skull’s leadership. In the Far East, Strucker joined a subversive organization that came to be known as HYDRA, broke his ties with the Skull, became head of HYDRA, and built it into a major threat.

As World War II raged on, Hitler vowed that if he could not conquer the world, he would destroy it. To help him achieve this end, the Skull proposed the construction of five gigantic war machines, to be called the Sleepers, which would be hidden in various locations while they generated and stored the power they would need, and then be released at a future date, Der Tag (“The Day”), to destroy the Earth if the Allies won. Hitler enthusiastically instructed the Skull to construct the Sleepers, unaware that the Skull intended to use them to conquer the world himself if Hitler’s Third Reich fell.

The Allies secretly parachuted Captain America into beleaguered Berlin to investigate Der Tag. There he tracked the Skull down to his hidden bunker. In the ensuing fight, the Skull was seriously hurt and partially buried in debris. Thinking he was dying, the German defiantly told Captain America that the Sleepers would avenge the Nazis’ defeat. Just then, an Allied bomb landed on the bunker, causing a cave-in that Captain America barely escaped. Support pillars that crisscrossed over the Red Skull saved him. The cave-in released an experimental gas from canisters in the bunker which put the Skull into suspended animation during which his wounds slowly healed.

In the 1950s, while the original Red Skull lay hidden in suspended animation, the Communist leader of an Algerian-based spy ring posed as the Red Skull, in which guise he battled Captain America IV. Since the original Red Skull’s return, the Communist Skull has remained hidden in Algeria. The current whereabouts and activities of the second Red Skull, if he is still alive, are unknown.

Some years ago, the original Red Skull was found by a search team sent by the subversive organization called THEM, which was actually the ruling council of HYDRA, headed by Baron Strucker. Strucker carefully concealed his identity from the Skull after the latter was revived. By this time the first three Sleepers had already been destroyed by the original Captain America. The Skull agreed to cooperate with THEM and did so just long enough to steal the Cosmic Cube from a subsidiary organization. This theft led to the Skull’s first postwar clash with the original Captain America, who again defeated him. Many clashes followed as the Red Skull tried to pursue his aim to dominate the world.

Seeking an heir, the Red Skull fathered a daughter by a washerwoman on Exile Island relatively soon after his revival. This woman died in childbirth. The Red Skull had the mansion called Skull House built and raised the child there. Through advanced biological means he caused her to reach adulthood within an unnaturally short period of time and endowed her with superhuman powers. He named her Mother Superior.

Recently, the Red Skull discovered that the effects of the experimental gas that had kept him from aging while he was in suspended animation were reversing themselves; as a result, he aged at an unnatural rate of speed until his physical age matched his chronological one, making him so elderly that he would soon die of old age. Determined that he and Captain America should perish together, the Skull managed to feed the superhero a chemical that caused him, too, to age at an unnaturally rapid rate. Skull captured the now elderly Captain America and injected both of them with a poison that gave them only hours to live. The two ancient adversaries engaged in hand-to-hand combat, and one final time Captain America overpowered the Skull. Defeated, the Skull finally expired from old age. Captain America was cured and returned fully to normalcy.

Since then, the criminal Doctor Faustus was apparently attacked by the ghost of the Red Skull after Faustus used holographic images of the Skull against Captain America.

Thus, the Red Skull, after so many escapes from apparent death, seems to be truly deceased at long last. But whether the evil of the Red Skull has truly passed from the Earth remains to be seen.