Hate breeds hate. Sometimes on a literal biological level. The daughter of the Red Skull is not to be trifled with. Inheritor of his hateful ways and just as deadly in her own right. What’s it like to grow up with one of the most monstrous villains as your parent? Let’s find out.
Sinthea Shmidt was not supposed to be. Her father, The Red Skull, wanted a son to be his heir but instead he was left with a mother who had died in childbirth and a baby daughter. One of her father’s dedicated followers, Susan Scarbo, offered to raise the girl for him, guaranteeing she’d raise a worthy heir. Sinthea would be in doctrine with her father’s hatefilled Nazi philosophy by her caretaker. When Sinthea was still fairly young, her father returned, impressed with her development but found it not fast enough. Sinthea was put into a machine that aged her mentally and physically to adulthood so she could better aide her father in his deadly machinations.
Her time as an artificially aged adult was short-lived after Captain America would stop her father’s plan and his own forced aging would be reversed along with hers. She’d stay with Scarbo as a child soldier willing to aide her father when he needed her. That is, until S.H.I.E.L.D. would kidnap her and wipe her of her memories so she could live a normal life. This would work until she’d grow to adulthood, then her father would find her and send his right-hand man, Crossbones, to kidnap and torture her back to his side.
Sinthea remembered who she was and found a partner in Crossbones. Both a partner in romance and a partner in crime, they killed a lot of people. Her allegiance would be tested when she and Crossbones would enact her father’s plan of killing Steve Rogers after the superhero Civil War. Sinthea and Crossbones were willing to sacrifice his freedom so they could further the plans of her father. Taking on the guise of a nurse, Sinthea would tend to Steve Rogers’ ally and lover, Sharon Carter, so she could torture Sharon with the knowledge that she was the one truly responsible for his death.
Like all her Nazi dad’s ideas, this one would blow up in their faces, literally, in the case of Sinthea. Her father would appear to die with the return of Steve Rogers and a resulting explosion scarred her face, she now was unmistakably the daughter of the Red Skull, you could see the family resemblance. She would be institutionalized until Baron Zemo and Master Man, other Nazis who worked with her father, broke her out and dubbed her the new Red Skull.
Evil hammers fell to Earth, each an evil counterpart to Thor’s Mjolnir. Sin was deemed “worthy” to lift one and wielded the power and became Skadi. Using her powers to bring about horrible devastation and ruin, she and the hammer got along well. While she was able to summon the Great Serpent to bring about the end, Thorn and the Avengers would stop both Sinthea and the Serpent. Hammerless, Sinthea would find solace with Hydra, her father’s old Nazi collaborators. She and Crossbones would be a thorn in the New Captain America’s, Sam Wilson, side. Her plans were fitting of her father, she’d develop a poison that would make the human race sterile except those she deemed worthy, three guesses as to who she thought were the worthy people.
Things didn’t work out, once again, but there was the return of her father who now wielded telepathic powers he’d stolen from the brain of Charles Xavier. Working together Sinthea would discover her father’s newest dangerous weapon, a young girl named Kobik, a living Cosmic Cube. Her face restored to before she was scarred, Sinthea would begin to work with her father, Hydra, Crossbones, Kobik, and a variety of other Nazis. Using her new “little sister” they began to rewrite history getting Captain America, Steve Rogers, to become a Hydra agent with Nazi ideals. She assists Rogers in killing her dad by not stopping him from doing so.
There you have it. It’s dark times and villains like Sinthea are their to enforce it. Will she ever make an appearance on the big or small screen? Time will tell. Either way, her time in comics is bringing about devastation with the rest of Hydra. See you next time.
Suggested Reading
Captain America #290
Captain America: Reborn
Fear Itself
All-New Captain America
Dr. Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net
