Last November I started obsessively researching Marvel’s Hate-Monger – a literal clone of Adolf Hitler reshaping the country through racial hatred. The supervillain seemed to meet his final death in 1980 – before he was resurrected yet again in 2000. The new 21^st-century American fascist promotes a war against Black people and the mass murder of “illegal aliens” costing “you your homes, your children’s education and hope for the future.”

Any of this look familiar?

Before a further deep dive, here’s a quiz: How many times did Marvel kill Hitler?

During the first sporadic reign (1963-1980) of the Hate-Monger Hitlers, the answer is six: he was burnt alive in a Berlin bunker, shot by his own hate-crazed soldiers, blown-up by his own Nazi scientist, suffocated in outer space, burnt alive as he fell from a launching rocket, and burnt semi-alive when his salvaged brain was destroyed in a laboratory fire. And finally his fate-worse-than-death: imprisonment inside the Red Skull’s new but nonfunctional Cosmic Cube.

With Hitler trapped and narratively forgotten, writer-artist John Byrne appropriated the name “the Hate Monger” (minus the hyphen) for an unrelated villain in Fantastic Four #278-284 (May-November 1985) — whom Jim Shooter immediatley killed in Secret Wars II #2 (August 1985), revealing that he “was merely a human construct” created by Psycho-Man (whose machinery inflicts “fear” and “doubt” along with “hate”). Byrne uses his Hate Monger to briefly transform Invisible Girl into the supervillain “Malice, the Mistress of Hate” — which then motivates her to become “Invisible Woman” permanently. Byrne makes the implicit argument that her experience as Malice, while invasive and destructive, also allows her to grow by accessing her unprocessed anger from years of sexist mistreatment (see Fantastic Four #1-277).

Despite the continuity error it embeds, Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas, and Rich Buckler re-reconfirmed Hitler’s 1945 bunker death in The Saga of the Sub-Mariner #5 (March 1989), repeating dialogue from both Hank Chapman’s Young Men #24 (December 1953) and Roy Thomas’s What If? #4 (August 1977).

With Adolf Hitler now having always been dead and his Hate-Monger guise left unused for a decade, Fabian Nicieza again appropriated the name (again dropping the hyphen) for his and Steve Epting’s Avengers #341-2 (November-December 1991), Marvel’s response to the Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King. Unlike the original Hitler incarnations, Nicieza and Epting’s Hate Monger is a supernatural entity who literally feeds off hate. Nicieza also reprises the KKK-based supervillain group the Sons of the Serpent (which I discuss here, here, and here). Unlike Byrne’s implicit argument about the curative nature of anger for a long-mistreated female character, Nicieza argues that anger for a Black man is wholly destructive, requiring the adolescent superhero Rage to cease being Rage in order to defeat Hate. Overtness is the allegory’s most impressive quality.

Finally, after a two-decade hiatus (three years longer than his previous seventeen-year span), Dan Jurgens and Andy Kubert resurrected the Hate-Mongering Adolf Hitler in Captain America #25-27 (January-March 2000).

Apparently influenced by Byrne’s and Nicieza’s indifference to Lee’s hyphen and “the,” Jurgens’ iteration is simply “Hate Monger.” Unlike Carmine Infantino and Arvell Jones in 1980 and George Perez in 1977, Kubert significantly alters Jack Kirby’s 1963 costume design.

While the now defining pointed hood and holster remain, the chest emblem has migrated to the belt buckle, his hands are gloved, his arms and knees are armored, and he wears a cape with a raised collar and goggles with red, round lenses. Kubert also includes what appear to be business slacks and shoes – perhaps evoking the look of Klan members who wore their robes over street clothes, or perhaps hinting at Hitler’s non-supervillain wardrobe underneath.

The closing image in #25, the character’s first appearance in the story arc, echoes the next issue’s opening panels: five white pointed hoods with yellow cross emblems on the foreheads displayed in front of six Nazi flags. “Symbols of hate,” writes Jurgens’ narrator, “verification of man’s potential for evil.” Though the German Nazi Party and the U.S. KKK have no direct historical connection, Jurgens and Kurbert juxtapose them as equivalents.

The opening of #26 also demonstrates Jurgens and Kurbert’s interest in the role of iconography, which they expand at the level of plot. Shortly after Jurgens’ narrator identifies images of Hitler as “icons for a warped tomorrow,” Hate Monger spraypaints Captain America’s shield with a swastika.

The cover of #26 instead features the word “HATE” in dripping green letters, perhaps to avoid placing a swastika so prominently. Captain America also appears to prioritize removing the swastika (“My flag against yours”) rather than stopping a biological attack — before Jurgens’ plotting reveals the two actions are unified (the burning heat of the missile forces Hate Monger to relinquish the shield, while only coincidentally removing the paint, allowing Captain America to use the shield to free Falcon who then diverts the missiles).

The plot element may have been inspired by Roger McKenzie and Sal Buscema’s Captain America #231-236 (March-August 1979), where Captain America is brainwashed into supporting the white supremacist neo-Nazi group National Force who also paint a swastika on his shield:

When the paint dissolves and he recognizes his original shield, Captain America returns to his normal self.

Whether Hate Monger is “truly a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler,” Jurgens’ Fury replies: “One o’ several that’s been churned out.” The term “reincarnation” differs at least conatively from both Stan Lee’s 1963 “doubles” and Peter Gill’s 1980 “clones.” The nature of Marvel time has evolved ambiguously too. When Jurgens’ Fury recounts Fantastic Four #21 (1963), the phrase ”years ago when I was C.I.A.” seems to ground the events in the early 1960s while also implying a length of time shorter than 37 years. Jurgens also reprises Jack Kirby’s Nazi scientist and Gills’ only partially coherent retcon: “Wasn’t really the man hisself, but a replacement body grown by Arnim Zola.”

Depending on the meaning of “the man hisself,” Jurgen contradicts Gills whose Hate-Monger understood himself to be Adolf Hitler. Jurgens’ Fury doesn’t believe it, which Jurgens makes implicit through the divided references in “He might just succeed where ol’ Adolf failed!” and “Biggest shoveler of hate and racist garbage this side of Hitler himself.” Jurgen’s Hate Monger doesn’t seem to beleive it either, since he intends to “make the whole world the way it should be” because “Such was the vision of Der Fuehrer – and such is the vision of Hate Monger.”

Kubert visually reinforces the division by placing a photograph of Hitler in the background as the Hate Monger speaks: “The world grows sicker by the day, infected by the mongrel species whose mere existence – drags down the superior race!” This Hate Monger presumably shares Adolf Hitler’s face, but Jurgens and Kubert leave him masked.

Though his Hate Monger reiterates eugenics rhetoric (“the one, supreme race finally takes its righteous place in the world!”), Jurgens emphasizes a specifically anti-Black prejudice by kidnapping the “most accomplished African-American military man this country ever produced” to frame him: “How tragic, that a Black military man will lose control and launch an attack against other nations, igniting a race war – and discrediting his people for all time. Or so it would appear when our well-placed evidence is discovered.”

Jurgens’ General McAllister Groves, C.O. of the Joint Chiefs, is likely based on General Colin Powell, the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who retired in 1993 but remained prominent in national politics in the late 1990s (and then served as Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration the following year).

Kubert also adds U.S. slavery imagery to the Nazi mix by drawing the General in iron chains. John Buscema drew similar chains thirty years earlier when the KKK-inspired Sons of the Serpent captured Black Panther in Avengers #74 (March 1970).

Hate Monger’s pair of anthrax-loaded missiles (a variation on Gary Friedrich’s “germ bomb” from Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #9 in 1969) likely reflects recent biochemical terrorist scares, including the arrest of former neo-Nazi Larry Wayne Harris for possession of biochemical weapons materials in 1995. Jurgens does not reprise the Hate-ray. While previous writers have ignored the question, Jurgens characterizes Hate Monger’s followers as “outcasts,” whose “most common trait” is “a relentless hate they foster to cover their own deficiencies.” Placing the Hate Monger’s complex in Idaho, a state that voted for every Republican presidential candidate since 1968 and was 91% White and .4% Black in 2000, also suggests mid-western prejudice.

When a SHIELD leader explains that “America ain’t perfect” and acknowledges that “she’s still got loads of troubles and the biggest of ‘em is racism,” he lists “the usual rhetoric and church bombings” as the primary challenges. The reference is significant. While the history of attacks on churches largely begins in the 1950s and expands into the 1960s in reaction to the civil rights movement, it peaks in the 1990s, with thirty-five burnings from January 1995 to June 1996, the month the Church Arson Prevention Act passed unanimously in both houses of Congress. Jurgens also uses the character of Falcon to highlight the role of race: “A skeptic might suggest you want a Black man there to help smoke the bad guys out,” which the SHIELD leader agrees is “pretty much true.” Despite these racial acknowledgements, Jurgens’ narrator presents Captain America in exclusively non-racialized terms: “He’s dedicated his life to freedom, individual liberty and the order of a democratic society.”

Unlike (almost all) previous incarnations, Jurgens’ unmasked Hitler also escapes alive. When Captain America finds his costume floating in the river, he calls them “Empty robes,” reiterating the KKK influence, and shouts, “We’ll get you, Hate Monger! I swear it!”

That vow proves surprisingly false, because the next iteration of the supervillain produces a new narrative thread, and (to my best understanding of this already contradictory narrative progression) leaves this 2000 thread dangling.

Dan Jurgens, now scripter and penciller, reprised “Hate-Monger” (the hyphen returns but not “the”) a little more than a year later in Captain America #45-48 (September-December 2001). The September cover date is dramatic, but #45 was likely released in July, #46 in August, and #47 and #48 were in production before September 11, 2001 — and so their depicted content has no relationship to the World Trade Center attack.

Jurgens largely repeats Kubert’s previous redesign, though the cape is now red, the belt gray, the legs enclosed in metal, and the eyes glowing. The last two details prove significant.

When Jurgens’ Fury once again recounts his first encounter with “H-M” “years ago” in Fantastic Four #21 (1963), he reports that “Adolf Hitler was underneath” the mask, which Jurgens’ Sub-Mariner doubts: “Surely not the true Hitler! Just as this one cannot be!” Captain America confirms that his strength is now “more than human.” Though Jurgens gives Falcon a retconning aside, “When we all tangled with Hate-Monger a few months back I kind of figured he was different,” this Hate-Monger differs from Jurgens’ previous iteration. According to Jurgens’ Red Skull, this is “a new and improved version,” who “works for” him.

Apparently, when the Red Skull last used the Cosmic Cube, it merged with his “deepest thoughts,” his “memories and experiences,” including his “time spent with Hitler – and his fiery speeches of conquest and domination,” which the Cube coalesced “into a form of living energy and emotion,” “the personification of my dream — of Hitler’s dream!!”

These events seem to have no relationship with the Cosmic Cube that Peter Gills’ Red Skull constructed to imprison Hitler in Super-Villian Team-Up #16-17 (May-June 1980). Rather than being Hitler or a clone or double or reincarnation or mind-essence of Hitler, this twenty-first-century Hate-Monger is the embodiment of another person’s memory of him. Still, when unmasked, Jurgens draws him literally shining through.

Jurgens may also reference Bill Mantlo’s Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #13–15 (December 1977 – February 1978) when Captain America calls his yet-unseen enemy “Evil Incarnate” — the phrase Mantlo’s Man-Beast Hate-Monger uses to describe himself. Or that might just be generic superhero rhetoric. A more significant reference may be to SS General and later Nazi apologist and historical revisionist Paul Hausser, unless Jurgens’s use of the last name “Hauser” for his Hate-Monger’s human disguise is merely as a generically German name.

The more significant shift is toward anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Hauser presents himself as a union representative warning a group of strikers that the corporation they work for “has shipped in a truckload of workers from Mexico,” “Illegal aliens,” “not one of them a tax-paying, voting citizen of this great country,” who will “work for pennies and stab us in the back while they’re doing it,” costing “you your homes, your children’s education and hope for the future.” A network news show soon announces: “one of the worst hate crimes ever reported,” “dozens of white men brutally attacked and killed numerous […] Mexican school-teachers here to visit, study and learn from their American counterparts.” The murders, “pharmacists, architects, retail employees and other common people,” “inexplicably believe themselves to be union employees of the Trident Corporation.”

The goal is to trigger “war along the border” with Mexico and the “complete and total destabilization of America.” Jurgens’ Fury likens the destruction to World War II: “Ain’t much that reminds me o’ London during the Blitz – but this comes close. At least five of these backwater Louisiana towns have gone up in flames. Burned by their own people.”

While the White characters are under the control of Hate-Monger, the Black characters appear to be responding only defensively: “Your kind started this! You burned our business – our churches – our homes!” They accuse Fury of being White, “Just like the ones who started this! Ever since that stranger showed up last night, they’ve been after us!” Since they don’t know anything further about the “stranger,” their impulse to “Kill him!” and “Tear him apart!” are not caused by Hate-Monger but are their actual personal reactions.

Despite the racial implications, Jurgens soon expands and alters the nature of the influence. When Hate-Monger disguised as Hauser next addresses a crowd, he announces: “At last, each and every one of you has come to recognize your true enemies! They’re those who keep you down, preventing you and your people from achieving their ultimate goals – and rightful place as the supreme race!” But Jurgens reveals on the following page that the crowd is diverse and subdivided into identity groups, each hearing a different message spoken by a seemingly different Hauser.

To a new group of approving Black men who call him “brother,” he appears to be a Black man: “they need servants to do the crap jobs so they placate you with a little bit of food, a TV and a low-paying job – just enough to keep you from seeing the truth.” To a group of Asian men, he appears to be an Asian man: “each and every one of you – is being ripped off while inferior races steal what is rightfully yours!” To a group of White women, he appears to be a red-haired White woman: “The time for talk and compromise is over! The time for revolution is at hand! Join me in taking America for us!”

Jurgens implies that all identity groups are inherently susceptible to out-group hatred. He uses his supervillains to reflect U.S. tension over multiculturalism, a term coined in 1965 and which grew into common use in the 1980s and 1990s. Jurgens’ Red Skull voices the conservative argument that multiculturalism weakens society: “I have no reason to destroy America. Not when your pathetically diverse, patchwork country is capable of doing so – all by itself, from within. Your nation is a cauldron of hate waiting to erupt. A cesspool of violent thoughts looking for release. It’s a fuse extending from one coast to the other, waiting for someone to ignite the flame.” Jurgens also selects rural Louisiana for a hate-crimes setting. The state was considered the second most diverse in 2000, with a Black population of 32.5%, more than double the 12.5% national average.

Despite overtly opposing the Red Skull’s rhetoric, Jurgen’s Captain America voices a contradictory combination of political speech: “I look around this room and see people of every race from every background imaginable! If this country stands for anything, it’s that anyone can succeed. Not only do we allow for diversity — but we embrace it because the whole is greater than the sum of the parts!” After the observation that diversity exists, “anyone can succeed” evokes a common conservative talking point used to counter accusations that prejudice remains an obstacle for minority groups. Then “the whole is greater,” a paraphrase of Aristotle that President Obama would later evoke in a 2008 speech (“this nation is more than the sum of its parts”), instead places individuality second to group identity at a national level. Ultimately, it is his “love of America and “his respect for those who defended America in years past,” rather than hatred for its enemies, that enables Jurgens’ Captain America to succeed. When Hate-Monger links himself to “thousands of minds, pooled as one unstoppable force,” he is destroyed by their conversion to Captain America’s utopic vision.

This may or may not count as Adolf Hitler’s seventh death.

Either way, it’s not his last.

Next stop: The Punisher.

Tags: Andy Kubert, Captain America, Dan Jurgens, Hate-Monger, marvel comics