Sinthea ShmidtSin

Like the most poisonous of ivies, Sinthea Shmidt is born into hate and grows strong in it, leading her to become a nihilistic, psychopathic killer with a desire for the world’s destruction.

The Daughter of Darkness

Surviving into the modern era by drifting in his own form of suspended animation, Johann Shmidt, AKA Red Skull, spends his post-awakening days on the Isle of Exiles. While there, he meets a peasant washerwoman reminiscent of his mother to bear his heir. He is furious when the child turns out to be a girl, Sinthea, and spits in the woman’s face, who had died giving childbirth. The Skull nearly throws the babe into the crashing ocean waves, but allows his underling Susan Scarbo, AKA Mother Night, to talk him out of it. She promises to raise the child in a cloud of fear, hatred, and torment at Skull-House, so that she might please her father. Mother Night is abusive and corrupting to the child, yet part of Sinthea still loves her. 

When the Skull learns he’s dying and as such needs an instant heir, he uses his Deus Machina to age the young Sinthea into a grown woman, mentally indoctrinate her, and empower her as Mother Superior. Not wanting her to be lonely, the Skull also brings in four homeless children who are altered, both aged and empowered as well, to become the Sisters of Sin and taught to revere Sinthea as a goddess. 

Armed and Dangerous

Following a lifetime of torment crammed into just a few short years of life, Sinthea is aged into a young adult. In becoming Mother Superior, she is also augmented with science and technology to the point where she can phase, fly, teleport, walk on air, put victims to sleep or read their minds, attack the minds of those around her, move objects with a gesture, and create force fields. These powers seem to dissipate when she reverts to her proper age, but that still leaves Sin with an infinite supply of rage and plenty of physical and weapons training. Even without super-augmentation, Sin is one of the most dangerous and unpredictable beings on the planet. 

She shoots to the top of that list when she finds an enchanted Asgardian hammer belonging to Skadi that transforms her very being. She is almost limitlessly strong and nigh invulnerable, can fly, summon mystical lightning, and use the hammer as an energy-charged melee weapon. With the hammer, she spreads fear around the globe for the coming of Cul Borson. Even when the assembled heroes of Earth stop her, she retains much of Skadi's knowledge about mystical artifacts. 

Sinthea is trained in several forms of physical combat and proficient with various weapons. She carries an army knife and several firearms, including automatic pistols, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, and a flight pack. She is also an adept brainwasher, sometimes using the Skull’s Deus Machina, which creates realities out of “mindstuff.”

Love-Hate Relationships

Even with how horrendously she is treated on the orders of her father, Sin still retains some twisted form of love for the man. She serves him under a variety of circumstances, including two different times in which he shares a body with Aleksander Lukin. When he is believed dead, Sin sets herself up to succeed where her father fails in the realm of world domination, but falls short.

In addition to growing close with her Sisters of Sin, Shmidt also has a strong, though highly volatile bond with the mercenary Brock Rumlow, AKA Crossbones. The pair seem to be in love, though he betrays her plans of world destruction at least once along the way. She also works with the Serpent Society and the Department of Occult Affairs as well as Hydra, even leading the offshoot Neo-Hydra. 

Given her general disposition, Sin has far more enemies than friends. Like her father, she hates Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America. However, her disdain might be even deeper for Bucky Barnes, AKA Winter Soldier, who shot the Red Skull and Mother Night while under Lukin's control. 

In serving her father, she has also repeatedly tangled with Sam Wilson, AKA Falcon, and Sharon Carter. Sin even kills the unborn baby of Carter and Rogers in utero. She also becomes a major target for any hero and specifically mixes it up with Brunnhilde, AKA Valkyrie, when they are both looking for the Asgardian mystical hammers.

Father-Daughter Bonding

When it seemed as though the Red Skull was going to die of old age, he set into motion a plan he hoped would finally destroy his longtime enemy Captain America. One of the many pawns he used to that end was his own daughter, Sinthea, who had been aged and powered into Mother Superior. She approached Helmut Zemo, AKA Baron Zemo, and brought him back to Skull-House. She not only revealed the Red Skull's decrepit condition, but also began training Zemo to carry on her father's mission, which involved manipulating his mind so he could see evil on a more universal scale. 

The pair toyed with Steve Rogers' childhood friend Arnie Roth and also kidnapped and tortured pacifist David Cox until he became the deranged Slayer. However, when Dave fought back against the programming, Mother Superior said he could retain his morals and die or kill his opponent, Cap's then-partner Jack Monroe, AKA Nomad. Cox chose the former and perished. The moment hurt the Sentinel of Liberty as the villains intended, but also put him onto their plans. 

Mother Superior and Zemo returned to Skull-House and she introduced him to the Sisters of Sin: Sister Dream, Sister Pleasure, Sister Agony and Sister Death. To turn the screw further, Superior and Zemo kidnapped Arnie, leaving a trail for Cap and Nomad to follow back to Skull-House where the Sisters of Sin attacked. After tormenting the hero into thinking he killed Arnie, Mother Superior took the opportunity to go off and kidnap Cap's girlfriend Bernie Rosenthal. 

After Captain America had been physically and emotionally assailed—not to mention aged—Mother Superior came at him hard. She had orchestrated his torment and felt she deserved to deliver the killing blow. Though she physically bested the rapidly aging icon, he offered her compassion, which she could not comprehend. After revealing that she had kidnapped Bernie, Falcon, Nomad and Arnie, she found herself usurped by her father and Baron Zemo. The Skull chastised and abused his daughter for her methods. 

Later, while watching the Red Skull reveal his history—and hers—to Captain America, Mother Superior heard her father say that he knew she could never take his place because of her sex, which is why he had her bring in Zemo. Furious, she attacked the Baron, intent on killing him. Zemo conceded the role of the Red Skull's successor to her. Shortly after, her father died fighting Captain America. Rogers handed the body over to Mother Superior when she asked for it. After burning the corpse, Mother Superior and the Sisters of Sin ambushed Rogers while the Avengers were attempting to de-age him. The rejuvenation process worked on them as well, turning them back into kids. With no one else to turn to, Sin eventually made her way back to Mother Night. 

Some time later, Bernie Rosenthal asked her old friend Steve to help find her missing teen sister Nancy. Rogers turned to Eternal Sersi for help changing him back into the 98-pound weakling he had been before becoming Cap. While investigating a ring of missing runaway teens, he was kidnapped himself and placed on a bus where he recognized some of the former Sisters of Sin. 

All the kids were let out at Camp Rage, overseen by Mother Night. Sinthea served in her foster mother's mission to indoctrinate youths with pure hatred. Sin managed to defeat the teenaged Rogers and uncovered the Captain America uniform underneath his coat. The Sisters of Sin nearly killed the hero, but he bought enough time to revert to his more powerful physique, which made him more than a match for the denizens of Camp Rage. He stopped Mother Night, but Sin and the other lieutenants escaped. 

Skull and Bones

Sin was eventually tracked down by S.H.I.E.L.D. and placed in a re-education facility outside of Reno, Nevada. There, she was made to forget many of the atrocities she had lived through and think her name was Erica Holstein. That illusion was shattered when Crossbones came and took her away. Though Erica first resisted Crossbones' torturous attempts to educate her in the glories of her father, those memories soon shattered and Sin was back to her bad old self. The duo decided to cut a bloody swatch across America in honor of the Red Skull, who had recently been killed by the Winter Soldier. An interesting opportunity presented itself when they found out that Pilsburg, Iowa literally covered a secret Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) base. When S.H.I.E.L.D. agents came in to back the investigating Sharon Carter and Captain America, Crossbones and Sin grabbed one of the good guys and tortured him until he revealed that Kronas Corporation CEO Aleksander Lukin was behind the Red Skull's death.

Sin and Crossbones planned to kill Lukin by blowing up his London-based Kronas building, but they were foiled. However, they found out that the man they wanted dead was actually sharing a body with the Red Skull's consciousness—the Skull had inserted his consciousness into Lukin’s mind with the reality-altering Cosmic Cube—and decided to side with him. They began planning a way to shatter Captain America's life while restoring the Skull's. After Rogers surrendered to end the Super Hero Civil War, they took advantage of a very public trial to kick things off. Crossbones shot him from a distance, but a mind-controlled Sharon Carter appeared to finish the job. Sin wanted to help Rumlow as he fought Falcon and Bucky Barnes, but was ordered by her father to sneak into the hospital and speak a trigger word to Carter to make her remember what she did. Crossbones was subsequently arrested after losing the brawl.  

Though Sin was angry about Crossbones' arrest, she carried on with her mission and even began leading a new version of the Serpent Society. Together they struck a major blow against the stock market and also freed Crossbones from S.H.I.E.L.D. custody before he could be taken to the Raft. Reunited, the pair tried to stop Bucky Barnes from killing Lukin, but their boss used an old code word to stop the former sidekick. The megalomaniacal psychiatrist Dr. Faustus tried re-programming Buck, but he resisted, broke free and became the new Captain America. Sin and the Serpents fought him and he not only took out two of the snakes, but shot Crossbones several times, leading to yet another arrest. However, Klaus Voorhees, AKA King Cobra, got the injured Sin away.

Sin wound up recuperating right next to the Red Skull and Dr. Faustus' pawn Sharon Carter in the villain's medical facilities. When the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent broke free, she grabbed a scalpel, put it to Sin's throat and used her to escape. However, the youth broke free and managed to stab Sharon in the belly, a move that terminated her pregnancy and threatened her father's plans. The Skull responded by slapping his daughter and saying he should have let her die. 

The Skull gave his daughter one more chance to prove her worth in a plan to wound their personal Presidential candidate Senator Wright, but Barnes spoiled the whole affair. The new Captain America even managed to foil her contingency plan, which led to her arrest. She was placed in the same HAMMER facility as Crossbones. He managed to rage through the place until he found her, but they were both knocked out by gas. Soon they were both approached by HAMMER Director Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin, who offered to free them after hearing of Red Skull's plan to put his own consciousness in a returned Captain America's body.

Sin and Brock found the Skull whose consciousness then inhabited one of Arnim Zola's spare bodies. Together, they all traveled to Latveria where Victor von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom, helped find Captain America who had become unstuck in time. With the body returned, the Nazi managed to take it over and became Captain America. In the ensuing battle with the heroes, Rogers regained himself and Sin's face was turned into a red mess when the heroes blew up her father's giant robotic body. She was placed in the Kurtzberg Institute for the Criminally Insane. 

A Face Only a Father Could Love

Sin did not remain in Kurtzberg long. After a visit with Zemo about Barnes, Wilhelm Lohmer, AKA Master Man, showed up and broke her out so she could take her place at the head of the new Nazi movement by becoming the new Red Skull. With her new name, she adopted a new style of dressing much more in line with Nazi military togs. To poison Barnes' chances of a fair trial for his actions as the Winter Soldier, Sin sent in tapes that had been recorded months prior by a Kurtzberg doctor where she claimed that Barnes had actually been turned into an enemy combatant and not brainwashed by the Russians.

The next step of Sin's plan involved taking control of the Statue of Liberty, capturing Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow and Falcon and then sending another video saying she would trade them for Barnes. The judge would not let Bucky go help out so he broke out with some help from Dr. Faustus. The entire operation was orchestrated to destroy Barnes' chances at freedom and it worked. Sin only intended to leave a hole in Lady Liberty's face and blemish Barnes in the eyes of the court. It worked perfectly and Bucky was sent to jail.

Sin then set her sights on much larger targets than the red, white, and blue when she began working with Zemo to find one of her father's secret bases. They eventually tracked it down in Egypt and got the Skull's journal from inside before Sin ditched her brief partner in the desert and made off for Antarctica. There she found the hammer of Skadi, which her father and his cronies had summoned, but could never lift. Sin had no problem with that and was transformed into the powerful warrior Skadi, who showed her the way to free the Serpent, one-time All-Father and Odin Borson, AKA Odin's brother Cul Borson. He called forth seven more enchanted hammers that transformed heroes and villains alike into his Worthy, hulking beings whose exploits enveloped the world in fear itself. 

While the Worthy spread hate and distrust, the Sinthea led a group of her father's old Nazi war robots in an attack on Washington, D.C. Barnes, Falcon, and Black Widow responded and tried stopping her, but Captain America was nearly killed in battle with the villain. In fact, Nick Fury faked Barnes' death to the point that even Steve Rogers thought his friend had perished, which pushed him to put on the classic Captain America costume once more and go after Sin, who had moved on to Manhattan. Eventually, the final battle took place in Broxton, Oklahoma with Sin and the Worthy facing off against Captain America and a group of Avengers and Asgardians with weapons fit for gods. When Thor stabbed Cul with the Odinsword, all of the Worthy's hammers flew away. Some were secured by the heroes while others remained hidden. Sin was left unconscious afterwards and taken to a secure facility, but she was freed by the Department of Occult Affairs, which had evolved from the Nazi Thule society.

Wanting to get back to being a deity, Sin began working on a plan to reattain the mystical hammers. Reunited with Crossbones, she wanted to use the weapons to wake the Final Sleeper, which would raze the Earth, but had Valkyrie (Brunnhilde) to contend with as she was looking to secure the hammers from nefarious folks like Sin. After securing two of the hammers, Sin, Crossbones and D.O.A. traveled to Project: Pegasus for a third, but tangled with the Avengers. Had Daimon Hellstrom, AKA Hellstorm, not switched from the side of the angels to that of the devils, Sin and company would not have attained the next mystical weapon. Though she remained wary of the Son of Satan's motives, she accepted him into her group. 

After attacking Valkyrie's stronghold, Sin wound up with all eight hammers and awoke the Final Sleeper, also known as the Serpent's Destroyer, just as the Asgardian shield-maiden showed up with an army of heroes. Placing herself inside the armor, Sin began her rampage not knowing that Crossbones secretly betrayed her by handing over important information to Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange. Sin killed Valkyrie, but she returned to life as a sacrifice necessary to defeat the fearmonger. After doing so, Sin's mind returned to her body, which Crossbones had transferred to the Dunwich Catacombs where she was to become the new official leader of the D.O.A. 

Hail Hydra

Sin and Crossbones next signed up to work with Baron Zemo and Hydra in his plan to sterilize a great portion of the planet. Sin got her claws in Captain America—who was Sam Wilson at the time—and tried telling him that everything good and heroic about him had been created by her father when he held the Cosmic Cube, but Wilson rebelled and broke free of her machines. Even though she threatened everyone he loved, Sam managed to fool her into thinking she had won before besting her. However, Sin got away when she leapt into some crashing machinery. 

Sin found herself unexpectedly reunited with her father after a clone of him came to awareness and had the brain of mutant Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X, implanted in his own cranium. She found her old face returned when the living Cosmic Cube Kobik paid a visit to look for her old friend the Red Skull. Seeing an opportunity to utterly destroy Captain America, the Skull began indoctrinating Kobik in the ways of Hydra, telling her of an alternate history where Captain America was secretly an agent of the organization. He also used Kobik to plant the idea for the Pleasant Hill prison, which he used as a way to get Kobik near Captain America and completely rewrite his history so that he would be loyal to Hydra. 

While building up his own Hydra faction and overseeing the actions of the Hydra Captain America, the Skull made a push for his organization to take over the nation of Sokovia and its nuclear arsenal. He also demanded revenge on the Avengers Unity Squad even though they had been disbanded. Sin wanted to take a more active part in these ops, but her father intended to mind-control the teammates into destroying one another. Sin took her lumps from both Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool, and Anna Marie, AKA Rogue, but the latter took the Skull to get Xavier's brain removed. The villain was freed by the Hydra-affiliated Captain America and Sin took him back to his home base, where the Captain awaited his arrival. This version of Rogers killed the Red Skull, but Sin pledged herself to Hydra anyway. 

After Supreme Leader Steve Rogers was defeated by the real Captain America, Sin and Crossbones continued leading a faction of the group now calling itself Neo-Hydra. They were very interested when Claudine Renko, AKA Miss Sinister, informed them that, in Old Man Logan's reality, Mysterio tricked Wolverine into killing most of the heroes in the nation. The idea of using this plan that an alternate reality version of her father utilized appealed greatly to Sin. After Quentin Beck, AKA Mysterio, showed what he could do to Logan, the illusionist escaped, flipped and told the heroes about Neo-Hydra's plans. Old Man Logan, Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, and a contingent of X-Men attacked Sin's island headquarters. Thanks to both Mysterio and Miss Sinister turning on them, Sin and Crossbones both got captured. 

Sinfully Superior

Sin and Crossbones next allied themselves with Aleksander Lukin whose wife, Alexa, had assisted in his resurrection. Though initially sent out to kill the assassin known as the Foreigner, the pair stuck around. Sin bested Ava Ayala, AKA White Tiger, in a Watchdog facility, but ran through a portal that closed behind her. Later, in Madripoor she got the drop on Mercedes Knight, AKA Misty Knight, Black Widow, Peggy Carter and General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross.

When Captain America, the Daughters of Liberty and their allies struck back, Sin wanted to rush into battle with them, but Alexa Lukin tried getting her to think more strategically. After escaping, Sin had trouble fully believing that Aleksander was once again sharing a mind with the Red Skull. The longer she stuck around, the more convinced she became. Sin even began to develop a friendship with Alexa, who had taken an interest in the young sociopath. She was then put in charge of a Chicago-based Skeleton Crew that managed to put a beating on Captain America. Sin recorded the whole thing and released the footage to the world along with a message from the Red Skull all of which played into the Skull's plan to harvest rage and fear to create a weapon. 

The young woman took to Alexa, who was intent on bringing out the Mother Superior powers in Sinthea once more. The process was slow and steady until someone shot Alexa through the head and Sin teleported them both away. Filled with a new sense of power and purpose, Sin dedicated herself to make her mark on the world in blood!