Editing Red Skull (section)

==Powers and abilities==
Although he has no superhuman abilities, the Red Skull possesses a high intellect and inventive genius and is a highly gifted subversive strategist and political operative. At one point, the Red Skull's mind inhabited a body cloned from Captain America's DNA, which possessed the mutagenic alterations induced by the Super-Soldier Formula. He was thus endowed with a body that was in perfect physical condition, with strength, speed, durability, agility, dexterity, reflexes, coordination, balance and physical endurance that exceeded that of an Olympic athlete. Despite the scar tissue covering his face and head, his senses were still above-average. He has been shown as a superb martial artist, though he was never on par with Captain America himself; he was originally trained by German athletes appointed by Hitler. He is heavily trained as a skilled marksman with various forms of handguns and well-versed in the use of firearms and explosives.

While sharing Alexander Lukin's body, he lost his superhuman abilities. Since then, he resides in one of the android bodies engineered by Arnim Zola, with enhanced endurance and resilience.

He typically armed himself with a trick cigarette that could fire a fatal poison gas—his trademark "dust of death"—toward his victim. The "dust of death" is a red powder which kills a victim within seconds of skin contact. The powder causes the skin of the victim's head to shrivel, tighten and take on a red discoloration, while causing all of his hair to fall out; hence the victim's head resembles a "red skull". He also carries a large arsenal of conventional and advanced firearms and explosives.

After fusing his own brain with that of [[Charles Xavier]], the clone of the Red Skull gains powerful telepathic abilities.<ref name="Uncanny Avengers #2"/> After being killed in a fight with Magneto, the Red Skull clone temporarily evolved into a psionic entity similar to [[Onslaught (Marvel Comics)|Onslaught]], vastly increasing his original powers while also giving him new ones,<ref name="Uncanny Avengers #25"/> ranging from material astral projection, total control over his psionic state producing tendrils, changing size and such, energy projection in the form of optic blasts, on top of greatly enhanced control over his psychic abilities being able to effect minds the world over to initiate worldwide hate.{{Volume needed|c=y|date=July 2016}} After reverting to his original form, however, he later expressed frustration with this new power as it makes conquest too easy for him, realizing that he wants people to grovel before him of their own free will, rather than just making people mindlessly submit.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> The Red Skull eventually loses these abilities when he is captured by Rogue and taken to Beast, who performs surgery on the Red Skull to extract the elements of Xavier's brain from his own.<ref name= "Uncanny Avengers Vol. 3 #21"/>