Johann Shmidt (Earth-14042)

Johann Shmidt, better known as the Red Skull, was one of the high-ranking Nazi’s during the Second World War. Due to a treatment with the same super soldier serum that gave Steve Rogers his powers, Red Skull gained superhuman strength and stamina, but the serum also disfigured his body to its current state and twisted his mind^[1].

After the fall of Nazi Germany, Red Skull became the leader of Hydra. A cold, calculating and manipulative villain, he quickly became one of the most feared supervillains in the world. Red Skull doesn’t fear superheroes or any other opponents. The only thing that truly scares him is the general rule that in this world, Evil can never triumph.^[2]. Because of this, he made plans to destroy the whole world and create a new one in which evil would reign and good could never triumph.

After Loki was defeated by the Avengers, and the DISKs once more spread across the world, Red Skull moved out of the shadows to start his master plan. First he had his most loyal henchman, Crossbones, break Loki’s henchmen, the Celebrity Five, out of prison transport so he could steal their Biocodes for himself with the help of his ultimate weapon, the Dimension Sphere. Next, he released Mystique from her DISK and ordered her to steal the DISKs containing Baron Zemo, Abomination, Tiger Shark, Graviton and M.O.D.O.K.. With the Sphere, he gave all of them a powerup, after which they joined him as the Masters of Evil. Red Skull forbade them from engaging the Avengers in combat until his master plan was ready.

For the final stage of his plan, Red Skull abducted the scientist Bridget Chan for her knowledge about the Gaia Lines; energy paths that ran through the Earth. With these lines and the Dimension sphere, Red Skull planned to corrupt the Earth to the breaking point, sending the Masters of Evil to ensure his plan would be seen through and gave ghem Biocodes so that they could D-Smash villains to act as their minions. Sure of his victory, he even taunted the Avengers by telling them his full plan, which would be complete by midnight. The Avengers split up and teamed up with various other heroes to take out the 5 bases from which Red Skull wanted to corrupt the Gaia lines. They all succeeded in their mission, and thus thwarted Red Skull's plan.

Red Skull wasn't done however. When Hikaru and Thor destroyed the last Gaia Anchor, Red Skull confronted the teen and succesfully tricked him into absorbing a shard of the Dimension Sphere into his body by threatening to go after Akira. Thus, Hikaru became Red Skull's servant. Red Skull used him to lure the other Avengers to his lair, where he forced Thor to fight his fellow Avengers or else he would allow the Dimension Sphere's energy to kill Hikaru. The plan worked and Thor attacked the other Avengers to protect Hikaru, until suddenly Crossbones attacked Red Skull by shooting him in the back. It turns out Crossbones was actually Hawkeye in disguise. He won his fight with Crossbones earlier, D-Secured him, and then took the villains identity to get close to Red Skull. Hawkeye tried to force Red Skull to remove the Dimension Sphere's influence from Hikaru, but Red Skull simply gloated that his could not be done. He was proven wrong however; when Hikaru used the Sphere's energy inside him to attack Hawkeye, Thor took the blast, and was able to resist it long enough for Hikaru to burn up all the energy, which restores him back to his normal self (though Iron Man later theorized that the self-repair system of Hikaru's Biocode probably had a hand in it as well).

Still not willing to give up, Red Skull activated his ultimate weapon and the fruit of all Hydra's technological knowledge; a giant robot powered by the Dimension Sphere. Through teamwork between the Avengers, Hawkeye, Power Man, Iron Fist, Black Panther and Falcon, the robot was defeated in a large battle. Thor delivered the final blow to the robot, destroying the cockpit and knocking Red Skull out cold. Red Skull was then D-Secured by Akira, ending his reign of terror.

Biocode: Red Skull obtained a complete Biocode of all types by stealing them from the Celebrity Five using the Dimension Sphere, allowing him to D-Smash all DISK types with no time limit. He later presumably gave away these Biocodes to the Masters of Evil.

Dimension Sphere

Giant robot