Trial and Error
Abandoning his unpredictable apes, the Ghost phased into Subterranea and teamed with Mole Man, who planned to destroy all surface life by increasing the Earth’s rotation with his atomic gyroscope. When geologic turmoil attracted the Avengers Super Hero team, Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, thwarted the Ghost with a high-frequency sound blast, Hank Pym, AKA Giant-Man, shrank to ant-size to short circuit the gyroscope, and the Asgardian God of Thunder Thor Odinson, AKA Thor, demolished the subterranean machinery.
Returning to Russia, the Ghost freed his apes using his newfound power to make others intangible. Coming to Manhattan under the influence of Victor von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom’s high-frequency emotion charger, the Ghost and his apes were among dozens of super-villains who attacked on Reed Richards and Sue Storm’s wedding day, assailing Sue and Alicia Masters before wedding guest Dr. Stephen Strange sent Kragoff and company to another dimension. When Reed used the Watcher’s sub-atronic time displacer to transport all the villains to the immediate past, the Ghost and Super-Apes were returned to Russia. There the apes were captured and the Ghost was led to believe they were destroyed.
His powers having disappeared due to molecular interaction with the Watcher’s matter transmitter, Kragoff established hidden labs around the world and trained two gorillas he named Alpha and Beta. He contacted Milos Masaryk, AKA Unicorn, and promised to nullify the life-shortening effects of his power-producing hyper-activator in exchange for the theft of Tony Stark’s cosmic ray intensifier. When the Unicorn returned with the device, Kragoff bathed himself, Alpha, and Beta in the cosmic rays, gaining the power to turn into a red mist. As Iron Man fought the Unicorn in the hidden lab, the Ghost and his apes escaped and activated an auto-destruct button, trapping Iron Man and the Unicorn in the rubble. Traveling to Africa, the Ghost dispatched Alpha and Beta to recruit other gorillas. In his crimson mist form, Kragoff floated through a S.H.I.E.L.D. station, seizing its labs. Alpha, manifesting super-strength, and Beta, manifesting mental control powers, returned as the Ghost used Stark’s invention to build an ultra-cosmic-ray intensifier to create a super-simian army. Iron Man and Unicorn escaped the ruined lab and attacked to no avail; however, Beta had developed heightened intelligence. Originally intending to let the Ghost create more super-simians, Beta decided apes did not need to rule the world. He commanded Alpha to destroy the intensifier, then led the other apes back to the jungle. The Unicorn abducted the stunned Ghost to force him to find a cure for the hyper-activator’s life-shortening effects.
Later, Phillip Masters, AKA Puppet Master, and Mad Thinker attacked the FF using androids mimicking their old foes, including a Red Ghost android that fell into the Earth when the Thing stomped his foot and created a chasm. The real Ghost, meanwhile, failed to find a cure for the Unicorn, who left him in disgust.
In further studies, Kragoff discovered that bombarding a subject with small bursts of extra cosmic radiation rendered them subject to his mental command. Weary of the unpredictability of apes, he switched to porpoises, squids and other sea life and then contacted undersea barbarian Attuma, offering a partnership. The Ghost needed Dr. Joseph Jennings, the world’s foremost marine biologist, to aid in his creation of a porpoise army with which to conquer Atlantis. He dispatched Attuma and his men to Atlantic City to kidnap Jennings. Tipped off to the attack, The Defenders—Namor McKenzie, AKA Namor the Sub-Mariner, Brunnhilde, AKA Valkyrie, Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, and Bruce Banner, AKA Hulk—met Attuma’s army, but two adapted porpoises defeated Namor, forcing the others to surrender; Valkyrie and Hawkeye became prisoners but the Hulk leapt away. In Attuma’s domain, the Ghost used cosmic rays to turn Namor, Valkyrie and Hawkeye into mindless slaves, leading the attack on Atlantis; however, Hulk’s Defenders teammate Dr. Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, wrested the story of these events from Hulk’s mind, teaming with Norrin Radd, AKA Silver Surfer, to discover that the Ghost needed continual cosmic rays to keep his slaves. When the Surfer created a planet-wide barrier to block the rays, the Ghost lost his mist powers, and Namor, Valkyrie and Hawkeye recovered. Hawkeye knocked Kragoff unconscious as Namor defeated Attuma.
Returning to the surface, Kragoff discovered that his apes were still alive and freed them. His powers fluctuating, he regained his original intangibility abilities. In his lab, the Ghost accidentally contacted Annihilus and Blastaar in the Negative Zone and formed a partnership involving an attack on Mar-Vell, AKA Captain Marvel. Peotor magnetically forced Marvel’s Nega-Bands together, bringing Rick Jones to Earth and sending Mar-Vell to the Negative Zone. Taking Jones to the Moon’s Blue Area, Kragoff used alien technology to duplicate the Nega-Bands, then exchanged places with Mar-Vell, transporting Nega-Bands to Annihilus and Blastaar to bring them to Earth. Mar-Vell, however, freed Rick and returned to the Negative Zone, destroying the duplicates, and stranding the Ghost there.
Somehow returning to Earth, the Ghost reunited with the apes then teamed with Nina Pushnikov, who earned an internship with Reed Richards, to learn the location of Reed’s gravity localizer. Kragoff tried to steal it, not knowing that Spider-Man and the Human Torch had installed it in the Spider-Mobile to enable it to drive on walls. The apes subsequently stole the Spider-Mobile, but Spider-Man lured them away with fruit pies while the Torch used the localizer to catch Kragoff.
Escaping later, the Ghost tried to stabilize and increase his fluctuating powers with additional cosmic rays, but his experiments left him trapped in a phantom state. Believing a cure existed in Tony Stark’s new cosmitronic cannon, he sent the Super-Apes to kidnap Stark, transporting him to a hideout at the bottom of Long Island Sound. Convincing Kragoff to take him to his lab for the original cannon rather than building a new one, Stark restored the Ghost’s solidity, then escaped, became Iron Man and defeated the apes. The cure was one-way only, however, and when Kragoff tried to become intangible, he faded away.
By force of will, the Ghost held his atoms together and circled the globe as an intangible red mist. When Reed Richards took a spaceship into the cosmic rays to restore his own faded powers, the Ghost stowed away, regaining his original powers plus the ability to materialize and dematerialize at will. Reuniting with his apes, Kragoff learned of a rare mathematical treatise at Empire State University’s library that could further increase his powers. Trying to steal it, the Ghost and apes encountered Spider-Man, who defeated them.
Returning to a secret lab on the Isle of Novaya Zemlya, Kragoff created an earthquake-making machine to demolish Russia’s greatest cities but the Soviet Super-Soldiers—Dmitri Bukharin, AKA Crimson Dynamo, Laynia Petrovna, AKA Darkstar, Mikhail Ursus, AKA Ursa Major, and Nikolai Krylenko, AKA Vanguard—destroyed it before he could use it. They were teleported away by En Dwi Gast, AKA Grandmaster, before they could capture the Ghost who, shaken by his narrow escape, fled to Manhattan, rented a penthouse and began constructing a Cosmicizer to increase his powers. Out of funds but afraid to venture out, he lured the Black Fox to his hideout and sent him with the Super-Apes to rob a jewelry store. The Fox fled, drawing Spider-Man’s attention. Trailing the apes to the penthouse, the web-slinger maneuvered Miklho into destroying the Cosmicizer, although the Ghost and apes escaped again.
At some point, the Ghost joined Intelligencia, a group of the most intelligent and criminal minds, who, in the pursuit of knowledge, spent a lot of time helping their members escape confinement and cheating death. They used a temporal shifter to time hop and collect the knowledge they sought and allied with Doctor Doom, who stored their library of knowledge for them. Their missions included recovering Alexandrian tomes in Wakanda, which allowed them to build a tachyon device that could attract meteorites containing Vibranium. Though Doom revealed that the device attracted something else in the cosmos: the Beyonder, a being with unlimited power, which Doom briefly obtained. With Intelligencia members, Red Ghost helped revive the dying Venom symbiote brought to Earth by the Beyonder’s meddling and continued pressing forward in what else they could plunder. They even got a hold of Atlantis’ library before it fell.
Returning to the Moon, the Ghost infiltrated the Watcher’s home to plunder his technology; however, Wendell Vaughn, AKA Quasar, battling the Living Laser, also entered the house, and their presence alerted Uatu, who teleported all interlopers outside. Angered by Quasar’s interference, Kragoff attacked him, trying to turn his wristbands intangible with a touch. Quasar played dead, striking when the Ghost turned solid, returning him to the Russian authorities, though he escaped again. Intercepting communications of the alien Snarks, Kragoff learned of the Kymellians and their technologically advanced Smartships. Locating the Smartship Friday used by the young Power Pack Super Heroes, he forced it to crash and stole its artificial brain, only to be defeated by the Power children and their allies.
Meanwhile, in Belgium, techno-organic expert Dr. Meyer Hertzog developed an implant process that he used on himself to create super-beings called wereborgs. The process transformed but killed him. Lt. Commander Guillaume Courage of the Belgium Ministry of Defense witnessed the transformation and, realizing the significance of Hertzog’s discovery, contacted Dr. Jennifer Nyles, another techno-organics expert and a former love of Hank McCoy, AKA Beast, whose memories of Hank had been wiped by Professor Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X. Jennifer perfected the implants, first using them on the previously abducted Super-Apes, programming them to obey Courage. Her subconscious resisted, however, Jennifer invited Hank to Brussels’ World Symposium on Mutant Research. The Ghost, traumatized by losing mental contact with his apes, wandered Belgium as a pale, confused, sickly old man. Courage, himself implanted to become a were-borg, ordered the apes (and hired Frank Schlichting, AKA Constrictor, in Kragoff’s name) to attack the Beast. Capturing the dazed Ghost, Courage placed him in the Ministry’s medical wing, later sending were-borgs to murder him. The Constrictor, however, rescued Kragoff, and the Beast cracked the computer program that controlled the apes. Regaining his wits, Kragoff murdered Courage by solidifying a metal shard within him. Later, the Ghost teamed with the Mad Thinker, scheming to create worldwide economic chaos. They replaced a number of strategically located people with android duplicates and planned to activate them, devastating the world’s electronic infrastructure; however, the Inhumans’ unplanned interference allowed the FF to foil their plot with the Ghost escaping after Black Bolt destroyed the pair’s Arctic command center.
Excessive cosmic ray exposure and the were-borg treatments further affected Kragoff: His eyes and skin turned red, and he learned to mentally control his apes’ every move. When the Wizard (formerly Bentley Wittman) recruited Ulysses Klaw, AKA Klaw, and a bitter former FF member, Sharon Ventura, AKA She-Thing, for his new group, Kragoff invited himself, hoping to lead “the Red Ghost’s Frightful Four.” Defeated by the Fantastic Four, the Wizard wiped the heroic FF’s memories of the incident, and his group went their separate ways. In further mutations, the Ghost became childlike while his apes grew more intelligent as they shared each other’s powers. Appalled at animal experimentation, the apes infiltrated an ESU lab where Mister Fantastic defeated them while the Ghost played with a bunny.
Regaining intelligence and recruiting another primate, Dmitri, Kragoff and his apes were incarcerated in the Cage and acted as muscle for a Russian mob boss, the General. Escaping somehow, Kragoff frequented Manhattan’s Russian Tea Room and the Bar with No Name.
Later, now working again with only the three original Super-Apes, he attended a meeting of Fantastic Four foes called by the Puppet Master. He inadvertently left behind DNA collected by the Mad Thinker, which was subsequently used by Mister Fantastic to track Kragoff down and imprison him in a new Vault prison in the Negative Zone, all part of the Thinker’s complex plan making unwitting pawns of the FF and their villains. In the subsequent jailbreak, the Ghost was the first of many to voluntarily return to his cell, although he soon resurfaced in the African nation Niganda, hoping to turn it into a Marxist-Leninist state based on the purity of the ape world. He allied himself with X-Men enemy Dr. Erich Paine, only to kill him afterwards. The apes attempted their own coup but failed, and later had themselves legally freed from Kragoff’s custody. Subsequently re-allied with the Apes, Kragoff encountered Roy Reyna, AKA Ape X, and Earth-8101 (“Marvel Apes”)’s Speedball, then used his intangibility powers to breach the dimensional barriers and access Speedball’s world, intending to conquer it. This dimensional travel, however, also allowed Earth-2149’s Marvel Zombies to access that world, intent on feeding on all present.
Returning to Intelligencia, Red Ghost and the others went back in time to gather the last of the Alexandrian tomes in Atlantis before it fell. Upon their return, Doom betrayed them all, keeping them from the library. Near defeat, Intelligencia then planned to use General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross to create the Red Hulk by combining cosmic and gamma radiation, and manipulate their creation to conquer the world. The Ghost reminded them to account for his homeland of Russia, but the group’s member Samuel Sterns, AKA the Leader, already had a plan. When the Red Hulk killed his Life Model Decoy, their plans accelerated, which included kidnapping nearly a dozen intelligent people across the globe to remove their intellect. The Ghost went to Wakanda and attempted to capture T’Challa, AKA Black Panther, and Hank McCoy, AKA Beast, but he was met with the X-Men and the Red Hulk, the latter of whom killed the Ghost’s ape Mikhlo. The ghost made his escape, but not before disabling the Red Hulk by crushing his heart with an intangibility punch to the chest. Having lost a family member, all the Ghost cared about was having funding to bring about another gammatized ape, so he, alongside other Intelligencia members, stole money from the Department of Engraving and Printing at the U.S. Treasury.
While attempting to replace Mikhlo in Russia, he was stopped by Jennifer Walters, AKA She-Hulk, and Lyra. He was thrown into prison at Gamma Base. Though he soon escaped and rejoined his fellow Super Villains, the Intelligencia, in Russia. There, they built the Zero Cannon, a perfect weapon that could hurl anything into space, made possible by the Ghost’s magnetically charged super-ape. Though Russia’s super-team Winter Guard tried to stop them, the Intelligencia used their new cannon to shoot them into space, and escaped to their North Pole headquarters. Though they were soon attacked by Dr. Otto Octavius, AKA Doctor Octopus, and his Sinister Six. The Ghost went head-to-head with master illusionist Quentin Beck, AKA Mysterio, and lost. The Six caused the Intelligencia’s base to explode, while the Ghost, his apes, and several Intelligencia members were shot into space by their own weapon, leaving M.O.D.O.K. behind, defeated, and promising to retrieve the others.
The Red Ghost was eventually retrieved. He then worked with Madame Lucia Von Bardas, former Latverian Prime Minister, to revive ex-Russian Sleeper Agents from Project Zephyr, who were in stasis and trained by Bucky Barnes, AKA Winter Soldier. The Ghost and Bardas activated one Zephyr agent to assassinate Doctor Doom. Though their efforts were stopped by Bucky and his ally Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow, who teamed up with Doom. The Ghost escaped, leaving his ally Bardas to take the fall.
Rejoining Intelligencia, the Ghost and the others met on a ship to discuss their diabolical plot to take over the world as the world’s heroes fought. The Ghost thought it was a waste of time. Their meeting was interrupted by mercenary Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool, who attempted to sink their vessel but failed. The Ghost was also part of the revival of Ultron, who was destroyed by the Avengers, who received a tip from James Howlett/Logan, AKA Wolverine, and an alternate reality’s Invisible Woman.
The Red Ghost soon returned to the Moon to attempt once again to plunder the Watcher’s home. When he crossed into a reoccurring chronospike—mists of endless time loops that drain him of his intangibility powers—he met with his past selves and one from the future. They all soon found their Super-Apes, who were being fed by members of the Future Foundation. The team of youngsters then beat all the Red Ghosts until they made their escape.
After the subversive organization Hydra had taken over the U.S. government and had an evil version of Captain America as their ally, Red Ghost attempted to make the world a better place with Project Onicef. Evil Cap infiltrated Red Ghost’s lab to take it over, and the Ghost ordered his Super-Apes to attack. After Cap killed the Super-Apes, the Ghost attempted to escape through a wall using his intangibility powers, but Cap disrupted them with an electric whip, leaving the Ghost without an arm and leg. Cap then apparently killed the Red Ghost to keep him silent.
But nothing gets the Red Ghost. His near death experience awoke the ghosts of his past—his earliest irradiated ape test subjects, who were now more akin to ghosts. These radioactive Super-Apes attempted to attack the Ghost but instead seemed to be terrorizing the town of Kingsport. The Avengers Emergency Response Squad intervened. They helped the apes move on with Heracles, AKA Hercules’ mace, which dispersed their energies, in exchange for leaving the Ghost alive to receive their brand of justice.
