Prisoner Number Zero

• Writer - Mark Millar
• Artist - Kaare Andrews
• Colorist - Jose Villarrubia
• Lettering - Virtual Calligraphy
• Lettering - Randy Gentile
• Ass't Editor - Cory Sedlmeier
• Editor - Axel Alonso
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Summary

  Poland, 1942: the commandant of Sobibor committed suicide, and Maj. Bauman is his replacement. Driving up to the camp in a snowstorm, he has high hopes, seeing it as career advancement, since he should easily be able to improve the sloppy camp. Processing people and sticking to a timetable was hardly challenging. A wild-haired prisoner in an undershirt stands in the cold, silently watching him.

  Bauman moves into his new office, filling it with boxes of old books and his family's wine, ‘La Fin du Monde' (the End of the World). He cuts food rations for the prisoners, saving the money for the war effort, and when he sees Logan again, standing in the yard, he yells at him to work. When he just stands there silently, Bauman orders him shot, first in the kneecaps and then in the head. An object lesson to the other prisoners.

  As an academic, Bauman had little interest in cruelty, but he believes every empire was built on the bones of women and children, and he orders Logan dumped in the furnace with the others.

  Bauman is uneasy with Germany's camps and preemptive strikes but feels they were justified to fight "the terror abroad" for the security of the homeland, after the Jews brought down one of Germany's finest buildings. (Rebuttal: as in detained presumptive terrorists in Guantanamo and the preemptive war in Iraq? Millar equating Hitler' Germany to Bush's America is puerile, ignorant, and immoral. Also, the Communists were blamed for the Reichstag, not the Jews directly.)

  Bauman hears whistling outside and holds a lantern to the window; he calls for his guards and finds Logan standing in the snow. He demands to know how he faked the bullet wounds, but he says nothing and lets a guard smash his head with a rifle butt. Bauman orders his guards to "kill him right this time," and they shoot, bayonet, and burn him to charcoal. But Bauman could still hear the whistling in the night, and he started drinking his vintage wine. He had been too foolish to ask why the previous commandants had committed suicide.

  Heydrich comes for an inspection, and Bauman shows him the crematorium. He sees Logan and excuses himself long enough to shoot him himself, but he's paranoid now and for weeks has the guards search the prisoners, beating and killing, to make sure Logan isn't still alive.

  He learns Heydrich was assassinated by Czech partisans, and he descends further into drink. His staff finds him passed out at his desk and tells him there's a problem with the crematorium: a prisoner won't die and says it's time they talked. Bauman finds Logan kneeling there among the corpses.

  Bauman knows he's one of the freaks with powers, like the boy who Gustav Reifsnyder saw take an armored car apart by looking at it. He ties Logan to a chair in his office and insists he's not going to make a fool of him. He smashes wine bottles on his head and beats him with them; he can't kill him, but he can make him feel pain, for months or years. Logan just leers as he falls back against the desk, knocking the lantern over and setting the room on fire. It's fueled by wine and books and is quickly an inferno. A bookcase falls on Bauman, and he burns to charcoal while his guards outside look on.

  His replacement drives up to the camp in a snowstorm; he has high hopes, seeing it as career advancement. A wild-haired prisoner in an undershirt stands in the cold, silently watching him. Bauman, speaking from the inferno beyond the grave, smiles at how they both thought Logan locked up with them, when they were really locked in with him.