Johann Schmidt

* Red Skull
* Iron Skull
* Cosmic Skull
* Green Skull

**Johann Schmidt**, also known as the **Red Skull** and formerly known as the  **Iron Skull**, **Cosmic Skull**, and **Green Skull**, is one of the main antagonists (along with Thanos and Ultron) of *Avengers Assemble* and a minor antagonist in *Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.*

In *Avengers Assemble*, he is the main antagonist of Season 1, the secondary antagonist of *The Infinity Stones* arc in Season 2 and a minor antagonist in Season 4: *Secret Wars*. In *Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.*, he is a guest antagonist in Season 2.

He is a leader of an adept terrorist organization known as Hydra, the archenemy of Captain America and some years later formed the Cabal. Both groups' goal is global domination.

While serving as a commander of HYDRA in World War II, Johann Schidmt became the Red Skull after being dosed with the Super Soldier Serum. He came into conflict with Captain America, who would eventually be frozen in ice for his decades during his last encounter with Skull. Following the end of the war, Skull found Captain America's partner Bucky Barnes and brainwashed was him into the assassin Winter Soldier. In the 21st century, he became a servant of Thanos and was tasked with retrieving the Tesseract. When he began to die due to the imperfect serum in his body so he allied with M.O.D.O.K. and A.I.M. and abducted Captain America. His plan to convert his mind into his enemy's body was foiled by the reassembled Avengers, so he instead stole Iron-Man's armor, became the Iron Skull and destroyed the Avengers Mansion. He then formed the Cabal and fought the Avengers, eventually gaining the Tesseract. He then betrayed the Cabal and absorbed the Tesseract's power, becoming the Cosmic Skull. His attempt at global domination was stopped when he was stripped of his powers and sent into space by Iron-Man, M.O.D.O.K. and Thor. He met Thanos and delivered him the Tesseract. He then betrayed Thanos and fled to Earth with the Power Gem, but was shot down by his forces and lost his sanity. He was then captured by the Avengers until he regained his sanity and fled to Monster Island and formed an alliance with Dormammu, forming a forcefield to protect himself from Thanos. He was eventually defeated by Ant-Man. Red Skull was then betrayed and imprisoned by his own creation Skull-Net, and was helped by the New Avengers in stopping it. He then used the Sleeper army and intended to take over the world but was stopped by the team. When the cosmic being known as the Beyonder created Battleworld, Red Skull was one of the many villains taken there. He became the pirate Dread Skull and attempted to steal Typhoid Mary's Vibranium treasure, only to be stopped by Ant-Man and Ms. Marvel.

## Personality and Traits

Red Skull is a power-hungry, manipulative, highly intelligent, cruel, arrogant, egocentric who seeks power and dominance over everything. He is a skilled orator, able to gave him the power to win people's hearts and minds and strike doubt in the resolute and courageous minds, and use it his advantage where he feigned loyalty and strength to those who followed him.

His personality is completely based on Nazism, as has many megalomaniac tendencies, and often refers to himself as a superior as he believe that the serum has made him evolve beyond his human condition. He had neither pity nor mercy toward those he marks as inferior. On his own account, he is "a leader of men". His self-proclaimed nature showed greatly in his encounters with Iron Man. Skull avidly labelled Iron Man as a fool and saw the Armored Avengers' preference to rely on his suits an attribution to his "cowardly" nature, and would also frequently consider himself to be a sacrificial person, in order to achieve his goals, while he presumed that Stark would make no such actions to accomplish his. Ironically, for all his pretentiousness, he is willing to except his errors in judgement. His observation skills also account for his ability to quickly adapt to any given situation, easily subduing Iron Man and subsequently stealing his armor.

## History

Johann Shmidt is the leader of HYDRA, a sizable terrorist organization derived from the Nazis. During World War II, he was injected with a premature and incomplete variant of the Super-Soldier formula. This early version of the serum initially granted him extraordinary strength and speed, and he assumed the alias of Red Skull.

Since then, he has come into conflict with Captain America for years, without ever achieving his goals of global domination. The imperfect Super-Soldier serum eventually began to deteriorate, slowly killing the Red Skull, and, in time, was subsequently assumed dead by many.

### Skirmish with the Avengers

With his body becoming weaker, the Skull formulated a plan with an associate, M.O.D.O.K., to capture Captain America and transfer their minds.

The Red Skull took a number of HYDRA soldiers to engage Captain America at Ellis Island, using a specialized set of weapons to atomize the Captain behind his shield. Iron Man, who witnessed this, intervened and sprawled into an unexpected frenzy while the Skull mocked that he "had a heart after all." Red Skull, using the Captain's shield, and the assistance of the technopathic M.O.D.O.K. proved more then a match for the distraught and unfocused Iron Man. The two left via a portal to the Skull's base.

### Forming the Cabal

Red Skull worked with Justin Hammer as part of the Cabal. The latter was able to subdue the Avengers as Red Skull viewed from the monitor in his chest. Being asked by Justin how he was fairing, Red Skull remarked that his performance was impressive and cautioned him to not underestimate Captain America. Justin disregarded the warning, as he classified Captain America as old. Justin was defeated by Captain America and later tried to talk his way into why he should stay in the Cabal, reasoning the defeat as a minor set back. Though agreeing with him, Red Skull told him that his services would not be required. As Hammer tried to give further reasoning, Red Skull cut him off abruptly and acknowledged that his contribution was important, being that of the head of the Super Adaptoid. Questioning and being confirmed by M.O.D.O.K. that he could indeed fix it, Red Skull told him that all it needed after its repairs would be a better pilot.

### Hyperion and Attuma

The rest of the Cabal finally forms, with Attuma joining in. They tried to destroy the Avengers, by using their own battle methods against them. They failed, but succeeded at one part of their plans----rescue Hyperion from S.H.I.E.L.D., and have him join the Cabal. Together, they attempted to kill Doom and steal the Tesseract, as of which they succeeded partially.

### Betrayal and brief career as the Cosmic Skull

The Skull has found the Cosmic Cube and attempted to rule all dimensions, but ended up betraying the Cabal and being humiliated by the Avengers. He briefly became the Cosmic Skull, but lost his armor to M.O.D.O.K., and was flung to another dimension, where he met his true boss, Thanos.[5]

### Escape from Thanos

The Red Skull betrayed Thanos and escaped back to Earth. However, he was followed by Thanos' droids, and crashed in Brazil. The Avengers investigated the scene, and found a mentally-unbalanced Red Skull with a Infinity Stone, which he had stolen from the Mad Titan. He was imprisoned by the Avengers to get more information about Thanos. When Black Widow and Hawkeye interrogated him, his only response to them was that "He [would] rise".[6] The rest of his Cabal members would break up as a result.[7]

The Avengers used the carvings the Red Skull made in his cell to locate the Time Stone. The arrival of said stone create temporal anomalies, like the appearance of dinosaurs, robots from the future, or Hydra battalions from WWII which wrecked havoc in Manhattan. In the middle of the chaos, the Red Skull escaped his cell, and tried to get the Time Stone, which had been attached to Tony Stark's arc reactor, and caused him to de-age.

One the Red Skull got hold of a kid Tony Stark, a pulse from the Time Stone barely de-aged the Skull, reverting his mind to a normal state & completely "healing" the super-soldier serum inside his body, which returned Red Skull's enhanced strength, speed, stamina & healing factor. Captain America fought the Skull to save Tony, who soon managed to put on an adjusted Iron Man armor for his young body. Tony attacked the Skull with a repulsor ray which blasted the villain out of the tower, the Skull was then caught by one of the pterodactyls which had been brought to the present by the stone, defeating him, but ultimately messing up their chances of information on how to stop Thanos. The episode "The New Guy" revealed that he escaped to Monster Island and formed an alliance with Dormammu, gaining control over the Mindless Ones. He wanted to cover the whole island in an impenetrable magic force field to protect himself from Thanos, should he come back. He succeeded but was kicked out from the island when Ant-Man uses Fin Fang Foom and arrested him.

## Powers, Skills, & Abilities

* **Medically Enhanced Attributes:** Once he was injected with a prototype variant of the Super Soldier Serum, he mutated into a red-colored skull-like being & gained superhuman physical & mental abilities. These abilities were degrading as his super-soldier serum was unstable, until the effects of the Time Stone stabilized his super-soldier serum & thus restoring his super-soldier conditioning.
	+ **Enhanced Strength:** He can go toe to toe on strength levels with Captain America in Hand To Hand Combat. He can even overpower him at certain times, likely due to his greater experience & tolerance for damage. Notably, Cap, while in Red Skull's body, was able to send the real Red Skull, who was in his own body, flying through the air with his attacks.
	+ **Enhanced Intellect:** He is a master level manipulator, strategist, politician, intimidator, interrogator, espionage, scientist, militant, spy, martial artist, marksman, scientist, intuitive genius, enforcer & leader. However, all of his intellectual abilities are based on Nazism.
	+ **Enhanced Speed:** He has shown to have the exact amount of inhuman speed as Captain America. He can react to oncoming attacks instantaneously.
	+ **Enhanced Durability:** His mutated red hyde is far tougher than Captain America's skin.
	+ **Regenerative Healing Factor:** His natural healing abilities are enhanced. This allows him to regenerate at an accelerated rate. It seems unlikely that he can regrow limbs. This constant cellular regeneration is causing his aging process to come to a complete stop. This healing factor makes him difficult to kill.
	+ **High Endurance:** He can tolerate more damage or fatigue from any apparent than even Captain America & tires much slower in combat than average olympic level humans.

* **Hand-to-Hand Combat:** He has been rigorously trained by the Führer's best trainers in Hand-to-Hand combat & can even rival a super soldier himself, namely Captain America.
* **Strategic Mind:** Red Skull is very well-known for his ability to produce elaborate schemes and his display of strategy. Naturally forming a plan that consists of two or more goals to serve his needs, holding back a hidden plan that wouldn't be revealed until later, and a fall-back plan in case his current plan tends to fail.
* **Military Protocols:** He not only founded, but lead HYDRA during WWII without any opposition from his subordinates & would've won if not for Captain America. He has since then led several highly trained & well equipped militias all loyal to his will.
* **Political Sciences:** He is a highly gifted subversive strategist and political operative, having mastered political sciences of may counties most notably Germany, Russia & The United States. This also shows his mastery over the knowledge of the common wealth laws.

## Paraphernalia

### Former Equipment

* **Iron Skull / Cosmic Skull Armored Suit:** The Iron Skull's armor contains a variety of offensive weapons that are based on Iron Man's technology such as. After fusing with the Cosmic Cube, he gained a vast set of new supernatural abilities.
	+ **Life-Support Systems:** The Armor's main function was a life support system, which kept the Red Skull's physical state from degrading further & restoring his strength, speed & durability to their original limits, despite his degraded bodily tissues.
		- **Superhuman Strength:** The armor increased the Red Skull's degrading super-strength to such a degree that he was able to match Captain America in an equal fight.
		- **Superhuman Durability:** The armor increased his durability to withstand multiple high-powered ballistic attacks without even a scratch.
		- **Superhuman Speed:** The armor also helped restore his degrading speed to its super-soldier status.
		- **Self-Sustenance:** With the Armor's life-support systems, he would not need any form of food, drink, rest or possibly air for survival & still operated in peak efficiency.
	+ **Repulsor Beam:** The armor's primary energy weapon is a particle beam weapon, standard equipment in the palm gauntlets that can repel physical and energy-based attacks.
	+ **Hologram Projects:** The Iron Skull can project a 3-dimensional holograms images such as maps.
	+ **Missiles:** though never seen when iron man attacks red skull after the apparent death of captain America he fired missiles at red skull so it is logical to assume that red skull still has these weapons.
	+ **Uni-Beam:** red skulls armor should posses a uni beam because when MODOK is showing him the software of the avengers strategies he fires one at iron mans uni beam
	+ **Cosmic Powers:** After inserting the Tesseract into the center plate of the Armor, his super-soldier abilities were immediately restored & he gained a vast set on new supernatural abilities.
		- **Superhuman Strength:** He became so strong that, he was able to hit Hyperion & cause catastrophic injuries.
		- **Superhuman Speed:** He was able to react to any beings attacks.
		- **Nigh-invulnerability:** He became impervious to almost al forms of physical or mental harm. he was also able to survive in space without any sustenance & did not need sustenance in general.
		- **Enhanced Regenerative Healing Factor:** His super-soldier healing factor was further accelerated. He was now able to instantly regenerate missing limbs, organs. he could also instantly heal catastrophic legions & was seemingly unkillable.
		- **Flight:** He was able to fly at high speeds.
		- **Cosmic Energy Manipulation:** He was able to project vast amounts of cosmic energy to create a variety of attacks. He can even enhance the Hulk's anger with ease.
		- **Portal Creation:** The tesseract made him nearly-omnipresent as he was able to go anywhere in the universe.

## Relationships

#### Friends

H.Y.D.R.A (group)

1. M.O.D.O.K. (Scientist)

#### **Enemies**

Avengers

1. Captain America (Leader)
2. Iron Man
3. Thor
4. Hulk
5. Hawkeye
6. Black Widow

## Appearances

### Ultimate Spider-Man

#### Comics

##### **Ultimate Spider-Man Infinite Comic**

* Ultimate Spider-Man Infinite Comic #27 (mentioned)

### Avengers Assemble

**Marvel Universe: Avengers Assemble*** Marvel Universe: Avengers Assemble #1
* Marvel Universe: Avengers Assemble #2
* Marvel Universe: Avengers Assemble #3 (mentioned)
* Marvel Universe: Avengers Assemble #4 (mentioned)
* Marvel Universe: Avengers Assemble #5 (mentioned)

**Avengers Vs.*** Avengers Vs. #1

**Marvel Universe Avengers Assemble Season 2*** Marvel Universe Avengers Assemble Season 2 #1
* Marvel Universe Avengers Assemble Season 2 #4
* Marvel Universe Avengers Assemble Season 2 #6
* Marvel Universe Avengers Assemble Season 2 #9
* Marvel Universe Avengers Assemble Season 2 #12 (illusion)

**Marvel Universe Avengers Infinite Comic*** Marvel Universe Avengers Infinite Comic #1 (mentioned)

**Marvel Universe Avengers: Ultron Revolution*** Marvel Universe Avengers: Ultron Revolution #1 (mentioned)

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "The Avengers Protocol, Part 1". Man of Action (writer) & Eric Radomsky (director). *Marvel's Avengers Assemble*. Disney XD. May 26, 2013. No. 1, season one.
2. ↑ "Super-Adaptoid". Man of Action & Ed Valentine (writers) & Tim Eldred (director). *Marvel's Avengers Assemble*. Disney XD. July 28, 2013. No. 6, season one.

## External links

* Red Skull at Wikipedia
* Red Skull at the Marvel Database Project