In this fun sequence, the Red Skull does the two things he loves most: Hating the racially impure and weak, and cockblocking.
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So, you're the Red Skull, evil Nazi genius. Your plans for world domination/the ultimate destruction of that verdammt Schweineficking Captain America/losing those last 10 pounds of your "spare tire" before swimsuit season begins are going perfectly. For the first time ever, the number on the OSHA "This Secret Base Has Worked ___ Days Without An Employee Having To Be Murdered For Incompetence or For Our Uberfuhrer's Pleasure" sign has reached double digits. And yet, a middle-aged black man might be getting "a little white tail." UNACCEPTABLE!
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Gabe Jones, the Tim Meadows of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- never mind him being a Howling Commando during the sharply segregated Second World War, I want to know why there are no other black people working for Nick Fury, even in the universe where Fury looks like Samuel L. Jackson -- and Cap's ex-girlfriend/fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Peggy Carter are ... having a moment ... in between spy stuff ... you can tell they ... have feelings ... for each other.
I often wonder how Robbins' character work veers so widely in his Marvel stuff -- for example, Gabe sometimes has a widow's peak and Metaluna-shaped forehead, sometimes he doesn't. Peggy here looks a bit like a '70s Lauren Bacall mixed with a Romita-drawn Aunt May because she's in her 40s and THAT IS OLD FOR A WOMAN IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT. THERE IS LITERALLY DUST IN HER VAGINA, IF SHE STILL HAS ONE AT ALL. OLD.
By the way, if S.H.I.E.L.D. was big on hiring WWII vets, where are the ex-Nazi agents? The C.I.A. loved those guys after the war -- every one, a ball-crunching Commie fighter to a mensch.
Also, I don't know how I feel about Captain America going from dating Peggy to her hot kid sister Sharon, whom Peggy raised like a daughter. It's not "Bill Wyman's son married his mother-in-law, making Bill, um, his own son-in-law or something" confusing and creepy, but even he shouldn't be able to pull off fucking sisters in tandem. Captain America, I mean, not Bill Wyman.
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Anyway, before Gabe and Peggy ... can do .... anything, the Blue-Ball Brigade smashes down the door.
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Gabe's forehead flattens and Peggy loses a good 15 years off her age, but then she gets it back with about 20 pounds of interest in that last panel.
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Does the Skull still punch the ladies? This is clearly a man who lives for his work. I would read the shit out of a Red Skull series that was just him killing employees, cockblocking his enemies and wistfully remembering his glory days to a captive audience.
And getting spit on:
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One more time, for the ladies:
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He does have a very spit-worthy face. I've never been to a comic convention, but I think if I did I would bring a sketchbook to collect drawings of the Red Skull getting spit on. Either that or portraits of Wally Wood. Or both.
Anyway, Cap shows up, then the Falcon shows up, and then the Falcon hits Cap really hard:
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He hits Cap so hard that he almost makes a dirty word/Internet meme when he lands:
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And then, the model sheets and any sense of human facial anatomy for the Red Skull go right out the window -- in a flashback, writer Steve Englehardt establishes that the Skull is wearing a mask. Bear that in mind with the following panels.
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I don't quite get what the circles around the Falcon's and Skull's heads are for, but considering the Falcon is in some wigged-out catatonic haze, I'd like to imagine them as the symbolic halos of drunkenness you see swirling around an intoxicated cartoon character's head. It would make a lot of sense to discover the Red Skull has been shitfaced drunk all these years, wouldn't it? Dry-drunk Skull = hyper-detailed multi-year logistics master; wet-drunk Skull = bellowing maniac who will risk those plans just to cockblock a AARP-eligible shvartser and dot a middle-aged woman's other eye, and then try to reminisce with them before their execution.
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If this is his idea of entertaining his guests, I would risk a likely death just to attend one of the Red Skull's dinner parties.
The Skull in that last panel looks more like my great-grandmother's awful, bug-eyed yappy dog's head than a human wearing a mask. Not that I have a problem with that, of course. I hated that dog, though.
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I just don't know where to start with this fucking page.
If only Cus D'Amato had been the bald megalomaniac who found Sam Wilson while still hiding in his secret lair, then the Falcon would have been an undisputed heavyweight champ and now have a pretty sweet development deal with the Animal Planet channel to make a pigeon-racing series.
You think you bad in Harlem? Just wait until the snowbirds down in Dade tear your ass up the second time -- you don't step to a man in bifocals, unless you want to be knocked to the floor so he can see all of you in focus. Biotch.
"VIP" on your car? Really? Was that a thing back then, Grandpa?
I really do like that spot-on Cap drawing in the second panel. I should probably mention that this is a flashback to a story where the Skull and Cap changed bodies via the Cosmic Cube, right? Well, I won't -- chinguen a su exposición, gringos.
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We've come a long way, baby -- nowadays, despising "sniveling Liberalism" and the "upright, cheerful Negro" isn't just for unreconstructed Nazis and their omnipotent wish-fulfillment artifacts.
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That panel of Cap crying and the Skull hovering by him makes me laugh every time. It's easily in the top five of "Ideas for my first tattoo, which I will never ever get anyway."
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Gabe and Peggy have escaped and are now calling in the Calvary ... and ... having more .... feelings .... for each other. Luckily for the Skull and the racist assholes Marvel probably would have enraged by actually depicting an interracial kiss between two consenting adults ... in 1974 ... it's just too much for a woman who's been a professional spy for 30+ years, so she runs away like a teenager in a shitty romance comic.
Considering ..... how these ellipses .... are comics shorthand for ........... thoughtful emotion ..... I've always felt .... it's funny .... that DC and Marvel .... published stories ... about thousands of unhappy-in-love ..... girls and women .... who spoke ...... and thought ..... like Swamp Thing ......
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Meanwhile, after taking a few good shots, the greatest American hand-to-hand fighter the world has ever known has had enough of his stupefied, unarmed partner putting up such a good fight, so he starts to consider decapitating the poor bastard.
Don't do it Cap! Then you won't be able to say that one of your closest friends happens to be black! [You know he wouldn't even entertain the thought of snapping Bucky's neck, much less put the shield to his throat and think about it. Fuck you, Steve Rogers.]
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I just like these drawings. The Red Skull, hoisted with his own petard because he'st compelled to deny Gabriel's codpiece entry into Margaret's buggle boe, throws some red dust at the Captain and then leaves unscathed. I think I've lost focus -- I should be making fun of Englehardt, not Roy Thomas. Oh well, The End.
*******
Jumping back a few issues, we see that Steve Rogers really wasn't much better at handling "the minority issue" either. Here, Rogers as "Nomad" is looking for the Falcon:
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Hey, they're both black -- maybe Luke Cage knows where a guy he's never met is! This couldn't be any more patronizing unless Rogers brought some clothes Falcon recently wore so that he could rub them in Cage's face to give him a scent to follow. Dear Steve Englehardt 1974: Black People are not like Gays; they have no radar for each other. Wait a minute, gaydar doesn't work like that, either. It would be even more awesome if it did.
You know, the Black Panther has legitimate tracking skills -- maybe Steve should visit the guy who probably could use some help as "THREE STAND AGAINST HIM."
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Now I know what to bring up to make the next Avengers meeting/potluck dinner/whatever the hell they do to justify sitting at a table for five pages straight in every issue.
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What the hell is the Beast doing in that first panel? It looks like he -- wait, did Captain America actually use the phrase "you people?" If I were on the other end of the line, I would have kept that guy on the phone just long enough for his dime to drop* and then hung up on him. I appreciate that the Beast takes the high road and spells out the metaphor-that-dare-not-speak-its-name before he hangs up on the tool.
* An explanation for the youth: There were once these things called "public telephones." They were talk-only landlines that cost a dime for three minutes of use. Theoretically, there would be one on every other block, but most of them were always broken. Anyway, you would dial the number by hand, and if the number was busy -- there was no voicemail then, and only rich people had "answering machines" -- or you dialed the wrong number, you had about 10 seconds to hang up and get your dime back before it dropped into the change tank.
P.S.
CLUNT
Say it loud and there's music playing
Say it soft and it's almost like praying
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