Last weekend’s escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looked at the earliest Dr. Doom stories and was a big hit. This time I’m looking at the earliest Red Skull stories.
CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS Vol 1 #1 (March 1941)
Story 5: The Riddle of the Red Skull
Synopsis: Even though America has not yet entered World War 2, Nazi agent the Red Skull has been sending his calling cards to assorted American military and intelligence figures, then inevitably ambushes and kills them shortly afterward with poison from a hypodermic needle.
Major Croy is the latest figure to receive the Red Skull’s card. Steve Rogers and J.B. Barnes try to protect him but he waves off the offer. The Red Skull shows up and kills Croy.
Captain America recognizes how deadly the Red Skull is and orders Bucky to stay out of this case. The sidekick investigates on his own and gets captured by the Red Skull and his men. Captain America shows up and frees him, but the Skull and his underlings escape.
The next day at Camp Lehigh, Rogers and Barnes witness the fiery destruction of industrialist George Maxon’s latest military aircraft during a test flight. The Red Skull is behind this, too. That night the Skull shows up at the home of General Charles Manor in the Virginia suburbs and kills him.
Before he can escape, Captain America shows up. It turns out that the Red Skull has been using George Maxon as an agent and Maxon dies in the fight with Cap. The Red Skull himself is still at large and Cap discovers a note proving that the Skull answers directly to Hitler himself.
CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS Vol 1 #3 (May 1941)
Story 1: The Return of the Red Skull
Synopsis: The Red Skull murders Major Douglas, who is bearing the Top Secret plans for the military’s new giant, vehicular drilling device. Captain America & Bucky discover the corpse along with a box containing a small red skull, letting them know their old foe is back. They chase after the escaping villain but his men attack them, holding them off long enough for the Skull to get away.
Before too long, the Red Skull has constructed a working model of the Drill Vehicle and is preying on New York City. When the villain uses the Drill Vehicle to attack Ebbets Field in Flatbush, Cap & Bucky attack him and drive him off.
Meanwhile, some entrepreneurs decide to make money by paying a pair of muscular thugs to masquerade as Cap & Bucky, and charge admission to see them. The Red Skull thinks they are the real thing, so he attacks them, defeats them and hangs them. (Yes, really.)
The real Captain America & Bucky trail the Red Skull and his men through the New York subway system, find their hideout and take them on. The Red Skull’s men are all captured but Cap throws the Skull’s own grenade back at him, seemingly blowing him up in the Drill Vehicle before he can escape.
CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS Vol 1 #7 (October 1941)
Story 1: The Red Skull: An Ear for Music
Synopsis: In this 3rd Red Skull story the Nazi villain returns to America to assassinate more political and military officials as well as kill Captain America and Bucky.
NOTE: For the first time, the Skull uses Chopin’s Funeral March as the calling card for his assassinations, an m.o. revived by the villain in the 1970s.
The Red Skull strikes at stage theaters and elsewhere. After the menace succeeds in killing off more military and political figures our heroes eventually foil the Red Skull again, and send him to prison.
CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS Vol 1 #16 (July 1942)
Story 5: Red Skull’s Deadly Revenge
NOTE: STAN LEE himself wrote this story.
Synopsis: The Red Skull escapes from prison and recruits three of his former henchman for some more villainy. One of them proves insubordinate so the Skull kills him.
Captain America and Bucky show up to thwart the two henchmen while they are robbing a bank. Cap downs the robbers but from a distance the Red Skull shoots Bucky in the back. Cap rushes Bucky to a hospital to be cared for.
Next, he searches the Skull’s previous hideout but gets ambushed by the villain. To pay Cap back for sending him to prison, the Red Skull imprisons our hero and steals his costume and shield. He goes on a month-long crime spree as Captain America and taunts his captive Steve Rogers with the news reports about how thoroughly he’s blackening his reputation.
Finally, Bucky recovers enough to go back into action. He too goes to the Red Skull’s old hideout and frees Cap. When the Skull returns from his latest crime as Cap the real Cap takes back his shield and costume. The Nazi villain flees and our heroes pursue him to an airfield.
Cap clings to the Red Skull’s escape plane as it takes off. The two fight and the Skull seemingly falls to his death.
YOUNG ALLIES Vol 1 #4 (Summer 1942)
Story 1: The Most Amazing Story of All Time
NOTE: Stan Lee wrote this story as well. The Young Allies were Captain America’s sidekick Bucky and the Golden Age Human Torch’s sidekick Toro fighting Axis villains alongside “regular American kids” including the grotesquely drawn black kid on the cover.
Synopsis: It turns out the Red Skull survived via a see-through parachute. He killed a farmer and fled the area in the man’s clothing and with his skull mask removed.
Sometime later, the Red Skull is sabotaging a stolen American battleship close to shore and clashes with Cap & Bucky’s ally FBI Agent Betsy Ross. The fire and smoke from the burning ship attracts Bucky and Toro who help Betty fight the Nazi villain. He flees but they chase him to his underwater HQ.
The Skull leaves them there in a death-trap while he goes off to attack Washington DC. Our heroes escape right before the subaquatic stronghold explodes. Betsy summons Captain America and the Human Torch while Toro and Bucky find the Red Skull flying a plane over Washington DC and dropping biological warfare chemicals.
The Young Allies drive off the villain before he can coat the whole city. Captain America and the Human Torch show up and defeat the Red Skull in his new hideout in a railroad tunnel. Again, the villain seemingly falls to his death.
ALL SELECT COMICS Vol 1 #2 (December 1943)
Story 1: Saboteurs in White
Synopsis: The Red Skull and an army of white-uniformed Axis saboteurs spend weeks preying on U.S. defense factories across America. Captain America and Bucky are called back from overseas to deal with the situation.
When our heroes arrive stateside, the Red Skull broadcasts a radio announcement about his next target and challenges Cap and Bucky to try stopping him. Cap and Bucky try the next night, but the Skull and his troops hit a munitions factory and escape with our heroes failing to stop them.
The next day the Red Skull announces he and his men will strike a tank factory. Cap and Bucky clash with the villains and drive them away from the factory. The good guys pursue them to their hideout in an abandoned hospital where they defeat all of them and capture the Red Skull.
ALL WINNERS COMICS Vol 1 #12 (March 1944)
Story 2: The Four Trials of Justice
Synopsis: The Red Skull and an army of his men take over the American resort city of Lakehorst as the first step in conquering America for the Third Reich. Cap and Bucky infiltrate the city and defeat their old foe plus his Nazi troops.
Comment: This story was an enjoyably cornball wartime tale contrasting the tyranny of the Nazi beliefs and the freedoms of the United States.
CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS Vol 1 #37 (April 1944)
Story 5: Frozen Death
Synopsis: When a jungle is inexplicably spotted above the Arctic Circle, Captain America and Bucky are among the troops who parachute down to investigate. All is as weird as it first seemed.
It turns out the rain forest has been caused by heat generated by the Red Skull’s latest plan. He has invented devices which draw energy from the Aurora Borealis and he is getting ready to unleash them on Allied aircraft from long distances.
Cap and Bucky overcome all the Red Skull’s men and destroy his devices, letting the region turn cold again and stopping the Skull from using his devices on Allied aircraft. Captain America captures the Red Skull once again.
CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS Vol 1 #61 (March 1947)
Story 1: The Red Skull Strikes Back
Synopsis: The Red Skull uses his scientific genius to raid a maximum-security prison in Florida and frees several of the worst inmates to serve as his new gang as he plans a Fourth Reich. They launch a series of attacks on hospitals and pharmaceutical locales to steal penicillin and other drugs to sell on the black market for a fortune.
Captain America and Bucky get involved and eventually stop one of the Red Skull’s raids. They defeat all his gang members and pursue the villain to a hydroelectric dam where they survive improvised electrical death traps used by their archenemy. Cap fights the Red Skull at the top of the dam and knocks him to his apparent death.
CAPTAIN AMERICA’S WEIRD TALES Vol 1 #74 (October 1949)
Story 1: The Red Skull Strikes Again
NOTE: The title is now Captain America’s Weird Tales because superhero comic books were temporarily on the way out due to low sales. Most publishers were switching to horror and sci-fi stories.
Synopsis: The Red Skull, who apparently really did die in his fall from the dam, is in Hell where he gains access to Satan’s Book of the Damned. He uses the book to summon the still-living Captain America to Hell.
Cap meets Charon, various demons and Satan himself. The Devil orders our hero and the Red Skull to fight it out and the winner will be let loose from Hell. Despite the Skull wielding the Grim Reaper’s scythe, Cap wins and returns to the realm off the living.
YOUNG MEN Vol 1 #24 (December 1953)
NOTE: Marvel was going by Atlas Comics by this point in the 1950s. They briefly experimented with reviving their Captain America, Human Torch and Sub-Mariner series as well as launching other short-lived superheroes.
Story 2: Back from the Dead
Synopsis: Steve Rogers aka Captain America is now teaching at a prep school called the Lee School in a New York suburb. James Buchanan Barnes aka Bucky is one of his students. In old school comic book disregard for the passage of time, Bucky is still that young despite having been a teen in 1941.
At any rate, Cap and Bucky discuss having retired from superheroing years earlier and are dismayed that the students at the Lee School consider Captain America and his sidekick to be mythic figures, not real. The pair ponder returning to action, a decision clinched by news reports of the Red Skull raiding the U.N. with an army and holding all the delegates hostage.
Donning their old costumes, Cap and Bucky enter the U.N. building, defeat the Red Skull’s army and then the Skull himself, who has proclaimed his allegiance to communism here in the 1950s. The Lee School kids and everyone else realize Captain America and Bucky are real and are back.
YOUNG MEN Vol 1 #27 (April 1954)
Story 2: The Return of the Red Skull
Synopsis: Captain America and Bucky stop the Red Skull and his latest gang of Soviet agents from breaking into a U.S. military base. They capture all his men but the Skull escapes.
In the days ahead, our heroes clash with the Red Skull’s underlings at various defense installations around the country. Presently the villain leads Cap and Bucky into a trap.
At the Red Skull’s lair, he and his men torture Captain America for vital national security secrets. Ultimately, Cap and Bucky turn the tables and cause the deaths of the Soviet agents and seemingly the Skull himself.
*** September of 1954 saw the last 1950s stories of Captain America.
NOTE: As hardcore Marvel fans know, when they brought back Captain America in Avengers #4 (March 1964) it was retconned that he had been frozen in suspended animation since 1945 when Bucky supposedly died and he fell into the cold waters of the North Atlantic as fallout from a battle with Baron Zemo.
The late 1945-1949 and 1953-1954 stories about Cap and Bucky were retconned as tales about replacement Captain Americas and Buckys who donned the costumes for a time. The 1950s Red Skull was retconned as an imposter serving communism instead of the Nazi cause.
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