From ice cream to Red Skull: Joe Simon explains creation of character

"His skull may be red...but his heart is black with Facism."

When you're 97 years old...you have a lot of knowledge, but usually it's about the dustbowl/depression and other boring stuff...this is not the case with veteran comic book artist and co-creator of Captain America Joe Simon.

In fact Mr. Simon's century old brain is so full of awesomeness that he recently published his autobiography, My Life in Comics, which came out in stores this week. Among other "back in my day" moments Simon takes some time to tell of how he came about the creation of the uber-evil and Nazi sympathizing Red Skull.

Now we needed a villain for inside the comic, too. ... Even sitting at lunch, I was always thinking about heroes and villains, with all sorts of ideas swimming around in my head. Next thing I know, I had a hot fudge sundae sitting in front of me, with the vanilla ice cream, and the hot fudge is running down the side. It was intriguing.

The hot fudge looked like limbs—legs, feet, and hands—and I'm thinking to myself.

Gee, this'd make an interesting villain, I mused. We'll call him Hot Fudge ... Just put a face on him, and have him ooze all over the place.

You have to be stupid to be in this business. Nevertheless, I did some sketches, right then and there. And I Iooked at them.

Nah, I thought. Who would believe anything like that?

But I looked again at the sundae, and I saw the big cherry on top. The cherry looked like a skull.

"Wow," I said to myself. "Red Skull ... that sounds good." And it made a lot more sense.

That's right...while your grandpa was busy wading through the jungles of the Pacific Theatre and storming Normandy, Joe Simon was eating a sundae and getting paid...thanks a lot grandpa.

Disclaimer: No grandpas were actually offended in the making of this article as they are old and lack the technological know-how or hereinafter known as awesomeness to effectively peruse the internet. If your grandpa was indeed offended you can follow Robot Reagan on Twitter and tell him off personally: @Mickaplease