Story #2The Red Skull Lives!
Writer:
Stan Lee. Penciler:
Jack Kirby. Inker:
Frank Giacoia. Colorist:
Unknown.
Synopsis
On a New York street,
Captain America is engaged in battle with a band of costumed assassins attacking a power station, but the strangest aspect is…that no one else seems to see it. Cap drives off the villains who make their getaway in a solar ship and still…a police officer and several passersby see no one but Captain America. The villains, Horst
and Wolfgang, report to their leader—the
Red Skull. We learn that in his last confrontation with Captain America (recounted by Cap in issue #72), the Skull, Horst, and Wolfgang were overcome by an experimental gas that preserved them in suspended animation for twenty years, until scientists from
Them discovered and revived the Nazi trio. The Red Skull agreed to work with Them, though both plot to double-cross the other when they get the opportunity. The Red Skull shows his minions the device responsible for Cap’s madness: a
hypno-helmet. Meanwhile, Cap is consulting a psychiatrist about the bizarre experience, when he is attacked by another costumed villain. Cap fights the man off, and though the psychiatrist saw no one else, the contact convinces Cap he is not going mad, there is a plot afoot. The Red Skull dispatches his henchmen on the next phase of his scheme: using the hypno-helmet to convince Cap and the public that the Avenger is a murderer. At the headquarters of Them, the scientists show their agent,
Count Royale, their greatest discovery: the
Cosmic Cube, the most potent device in all the world. Later, on a city street, Cap talks to a veteran who asks for his autograph. The Skull’s henchman appears, intending to shoot this man and hypnotize everyone into believing that Captain America is the killer. Suddenly Cap swings into action, overpowering the villain. Cap was never under his hypnotic spell, thanks to a jamming circuit added to his mask by
SHIELD scientists. With a shock, Cap learns from the villain that his greatest enemy, the Red Skull, is still alive, and it is his destiny to stop the Nazi madman.