Day Four of the Avengers 2 theme
week. HYDRA’s motto is “Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place,”
but I do believe that that motto hinges on the concept that Red Skull is the
body. Meaning that Skull is always there, protected and directing the heads
towards their goal. Why? Because the group seems to fall into absolute anarchy
whenever he dies/disappears. Which is kind of to be expected when you have at
least three sub-commanders, each with enough ambition to try to steal the top
spot. In HYDRA these sub-commanders are Baron Heinrich Zemo, Viper/Lady Hydra,
and Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. These three always seem to be at each other’s
throats, even when Skull is around to tell them to shut up and get along. You can probably imagine what it’s like when
he’s NOT around. Today we’ll be focusing on Strucker. Let’s get to it.
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| Ug, a face even a mother would have trouble loving. |
Baron Wolfgang von Strucker was
born in Prussia in the late 1800s. The Struckers were an important noble family
in Prussia, but relocated to their castle in Bavaria after that nasty business
known as the Franco-Prussian War. Despite being displaced from their nation,
the Sturckers were still very wealthy. Young Wolfgang wanted for nothing, and
spent most of his youth fencing, becoming a champion fencer by eighteen. Which
also earned him a rather prominent scar on his face. Strucker served in WWI,
and later became a prominent member in the Nazi Party. Pretty much from the
get-go he was given the weird, supervilliany assignments. Like using a powerful
psychic (specifically the Shadow King) in a plan to dispute the English Royal
Family and install a king who would be sympathetic to the Nazis. Why they
didn’t just use Shadow King to have British Parliament vote in a Nazi, which
would have been a much greater blow any Anti-Nazi sentiment than replacing the
figurehead king, I’ll never know. This stupid plan was thwarted by
time-traveling members of Excalibur (The British branch of the X-Men) and
everyone’s favorite Nazi fighting Canuck, Logan. This was before he started
going by Wolverine.
Once World War Two got started,
Strucker was kept busy with evil plans. Like, helping the evilish Ninja
organization known as the Hand train a young Russian girl into a master
assassin. Yeah, Natasha Romanova (Black Widow) has been at this for a while.
This plan was thwarted by Logan, again. Still pre-metal bones. Strucker was also sent
into the reclusive nation of Latveria to steal the “Storm-Catcher” a device
capable of manipulating cosmic energy. This plan was ruined by another
time-traveling X-Men team, X-Factor. After the good ol’ USA joined WWII,
Strucker’s constant headache became the Howling Commandos, led by a young Nick
Fury. The Fuhrer demanded that Strucker personally humiliate and kill Fury and
his squad. How’d he plan to do this? Hamlet
style, challenging Fury to a sword fight after Strucker secretly drugged him.
Despite the drugs, and Struckers experience with a blade, Fury nearly defeated
the Nazi, before passing out from the poison. Despite Fury being saved by the
Commandos, Strucker recorded the fight and sent it back to Berlin to be used as
propaganda.
After Strucker had been humiliated by the
Howling Commandos, the Invaders (Lead by Captain America), and Thor, even after
getting his hands on some modern WW2 History Books thanks to a time-traveling
Doctor Doom, Hitler had had enough. Strucker was marked for death by Hitler’s
Gestapo. He would have been executed, if not for one of Hitler’s top advisors,
Johann Schmidt. Better known as the Red Skull. Skull, having realized that
Hitler’s fall was inevitable was planning on building a new power base for
himself. He smuggled Strucker out of Europe into Japan, with orders to finance
and help create a new evil organization for Skull. Strucker took the easy way
out and just coopted an existing evil organization, HYDRA. Which, at the time
was a subversive movement in Japan which was connected with the Hand. Strucker helped the group on a few occasions before killing the Supreme Hydra and
taking over. He also killed the Hand Ninja to ensure that his new organization
wasn’t “corrupted” by the ninja influences. He had a new evil army, an island base and some money to burn. Strucker had it made, for a few weeks at least.
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| Haven't seen much, but an okay interpretation thus far. |
He was forced to rejoin the Nazis,
however, after his base of operations in the south pacific was destroyed. He
played at being a good heel clicking lapdog, all the while secretly funneling
Nazi funds into HYDRA. He used a stolen Japanese sub as his headquarters, and
using the history books as a guide tried to build the Atom bomb before the US.
Cap and the Invaders put a stop to this, the fight also destroyed Strucker’s
books from the future. Sucks to be you Wolfgang. After the fall of the Nazis,
Strucker went into preservation mode, placing the Nazis’ top Superhuman weapons
Master Man and Warrior Woman, and later the Skull himself, into suspended
animation. He somehow avoided prosecution for war crimes, got his hands on
super drugs that retarded the aging process, and nearly got the better of
Logan. Unfortunately for Strucker, the ageless Canadian was saved by two CIA
Agents, Richard and Mary Parker. Yes, those Parkers. He also tried to get his
hands on some Nazi gold found by one Gabrielle Haller but was thwarted by
Haller’s boyfriend, Charles Xavier, and Charles’ buddy Magneto. Strucker also
witnessed the creation of the Anti-HYDRA spy agency, SHIELD, as well as the
evil scientific organization known as the Advanced Idea Mechanics, created from
a splintered HYDRA research division. He attempted to launch a bomb filled with
“Death Spores” from Hydra Island, but was killed before the missile could
launch.
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| "HYDRA is mine!" Until Zemo shows up and kicks your ass. Just saying. |
Strucker continued to run HYDRA in
death, however, thanks to several Life Model Decoys (LMDs). These are robots
that are so scary advanced that they can pass for human, even to the most
trained expert. Strucker’s mind was uploaded into several LMD’s, the most
successful of which, Deltite, even took over SHIELD for a time. He caused to
much trouble there that once the dust settled Fury was forced to disband the
organization. For a bit. Strucker was eventually resurrected, bonded with the
Death Spores in his very DNA, giving him a nice trump card. It's hard to kill a man if doing so released deadly spores. During the Dark Reign Story arc,
Strucker revealed that HYDRA had been puppet mastering SHIELD for some time,
only to discover Fury had known this for some time and counter…puppet mastered…
them. Yeah it’s a crazy convoluted story, but roll with it. He was shot in the
head after being defeated by Nick Fury and his brother Jake. Previous experience
shows that it’s just a matter of time before he gets back up again.
Baron Strucker is an expert spy.
He’s a master hand-to-hand combatant, swordsman, marksman, and master of
disguise. He has used a serum created by HYDRA since the 1950s to keep him
physically fit and slow the aging process. He looks like an eighty year old
man, but has the physical strength and stamina of someone in their thirties. He
uses a metal gauntlet known as the Satan Claw which amplifies his strength and
discharges an electric blast. After his most recent revival it was found he has
the Death Spore bonded to his DNA. This allows him to at will release a
powerful virus that can kill anyone that breaths it in. Sick little Nazi, isn’t
he?
Strucker has only been used a
handful of times in Marvel Media, most likely because of his Nazi roots. Don’t
want to explain that to the kiddes until middle school, am I right?
 |
| Mini-Punch! Now who has a stupid power, you crazy old windbag? |
Strucker was a recurring antagonist
in the Marvel’s The Avengers: Earth’s
Mightiest Heroes. He appears as a young man in “The Red Skull Strikes” a
“pre-series” episode that explains how Cap got frozen in ice. We also see him
in another pre-series episode entitled “Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD” in which his
top enforced, the Grim Reaper, nearly breaks him out of the Vault, the high
security prison for tech based villains. This episode also shows that the Satan
Claw has been retooled as the source of Strucker’s long life, he uses it to
suck the youth out of others. It’s why the very young looking Nick Fury has
gray in his hair. In the episode “Living Legend” we see him and fellow Baron,
Zemo, have a match over who should rule HYDRA. Zemo easily bests both Strucker
and Grim Reaper, but let’s Strucker have HYDRA in exchange for Doctor Zola.
Stucker was in the background of several episodes, but returned with vengeance
in “Hail, HYDRA!” where evil organization AIM and HYDRA are fighting over the
Cosmic Cube. The Avengers get involved when super spy Black Widow lets them in
on things. This episode includes one of the best moments in the series, where
Strucker is inches from touching the cube, and in doing so rewrite history so
that HYDRA won WWII, only to be thwarted. Several buildings away Hawkeye
launches an arrow with Ant-Man hanging onto the tip. Right when Strucker’s
about to win, WHAM, Mini-Punch to the chin. Keep in mind, when tiny Ant-Man’s
punch is like a bullet, small but focused. It knocks Strucker on his ass and
helps the Avengers win the day.
Baron Stucker has appeared in the
Marvel Universe. We see him first at the end of Captain America: Winter Soldier, portrayed by Thomas Kretschmann.
In the post credit scene we learn that his main branch of HYDRA had smuggled
several powerful artifacts from SHIELD custody sometime before the film, this
includes Loki’s scepter from the first film, and we see him gloating over “the
twins” revealed to be the Maximoffs. He will have some role in Age of Ulton, but the title suggest
he’ll be a secondary villain to the titular baddie, Ultron. Just a few more
days to wait and see.
Strucker is an interesting bad guy.
I honestly had no idea how far his reach has been until writing this post. He’s
interacted with, and in some cases created, some of the most memorable characters
and organizations of the Marvel Universe. His powers and abilities appear to be
a mix of science and magic that Marvel likes showing off, and the whole threat
of releasing killer spores with his death makes it hard to end that baddie. Of
the various HYDRA Leaders he is not my favorite, though I admit I do have to
respect him a little more now seeing how he shaped it and other evil groups.
He’s the villainous, conniving, surviving Baron Strucker. Next time, Avengers: Age of Ultron. I’m so excited!
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