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Thursday, February 05, 2015 

Villain worship taken too far

A man in Venezuela, once lorded over by the now deceased Hugo Chavez, went to such extremes over his fandom for Red Skull, he even sliced off his nose:
A comic book fan has given people something to Marvel at after having his nose chopped off to look like a super villain.
That's nothing to Marvel at one bit. It only gives new meaning to the old slang "cutting off one's nose to spite their own face".
Venezuelan Henry Damon now goes by the name Red Skull after he had the end of his hooter surgically removed to look like Captain America’s nemesis.

The tattooed 37-year-old, who is happily married, has already had bumps put on his forehead and arms.

Pal Pablo Hernandez, 38, said of the happily married dad: "He has loved comic books since he was a kid and always dreamed of being Red Skull, but never got round to doing it.

"Then he met up with a brilliant surgeon who specialises in extreme body modifications and just knew that this was his opportunity.”

Ranked as the 14th greatest comic book villain of all time, Red Skull first appeared in 1947 as the Nazi agent arch-enemy of comic book hero Captain America.
Correction: Johann Shmidt first debuted in Captain America Comics #7, October 1941, while WW2 was still raging. But what really matters here is how somebody can obsess themselves with villains more than heroes, and take it to such extremes they'd desecrate their own bodies. If he really had to get surgery to look like a deformed humanoid, why not The Thing, Hulk, Beast, Swamp Thing, or even Martian Manhunter? This man did not love comics so much as he did love villains, and worse, a Nazi villain. I don't consider that a healthy obsession at all. This is possibly the result of what a country run by totalitarian mindsets teaches, and it's truly awful how the man wants to look like a supervillain instead of a superhero.

Of all the villain worship running amok in modern comics fandom at the heroes' expense, this has to be the most disturbing yet, and in a country run by anti-American socialism.

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Someone please tell me that this story is an internet hoax.

It's beyond crazy. It's a thousand times crazier than the Trekkie who had his name legally changed to James T. Kirk. It would be bad enough if someone had plastic surgery to look like some good-looking fictional character or real-life movie star. But why anyone would mutilate himself to resemble a disfigured comic book character (and a villain at that) is just incomprehensible.

And that "brilliant surgeon" sounds like a quack. No reputable doctor would perform elective surgery on a patient who is very likely to be legally incompetent and clinically insane.

It's one thing for children to tie towels around their necks and play "Superman" and "Batman" in their back yards. Or even for teenage girls to have their hair styled like some popular actress or rock singer. It's another thing for a middle-aged adult to imitate comic book characters, let alone intentionally mutilate himself in order to do so.

And where did the writer of that article get the the idea that the Red Skull, described in the article itself as a "Nazi agent," first appeared in 1947? It would not appear to be a typo, since the "1" and "7" keys are not that close together. Why would Timely (WWII-era Marvel Comics) introduce a Nazi villain two years after WWII ended? Duh.

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