Adventures of the Outsiders #34-36 is a peculiar, not very good story from the often formidable team of Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis. Most of it involves a big superhero-supervillain battle for the fate of fictional European nation Markovia, usually ruled by the superhero Geo-Force but conquered by the unsubtly named Nazi sympathizer Baron Bedlam. It's almost incidental that Bedlam has also cloned Hitler to make an ally of him. Bedlam is not, in the final analysis, a very practical man. Even though this clone lacks the original's memories, Bedlam is confident he can reawaken Hitler's fundamental nature. He shows him a constant feed of educational videos about the original Hitler. Hitler is also under the care of a kindly Jewish maid (with a Star of David necklace) and given a gun. When he shoots the maid, Bedlam reasons, they will know that the true Hitler has reasserted himself. Instead, the clone, faced with the awful destiny of killing six million people like the innocent creature before him, shoots himself. What makes the subplot haunting, almost thirty years later, is that it implies the original Hitler might have done the same: that when the war was lost and everything he'd worked for was in ruins, he too was hit by the stabbing realization that he had murdered millions. Some would reject this concept, insisting Hitler was incapable of such guilt or incapable of seeing the Jews as a human race after all. But ultimately we'll never know. And ultimately it's this "Hitler's" sacrifice that matters. Everyone has a chance to forge their own destiny. Did we miss any renditions you'd include on this list? Let us know in the comments.
T Campbell has written quite a few online comics series and selected work for Marvel, Archie and Tokyopop. His longest-running works are Fans, Penny and Aggie-- and his current project with co-writer Phil Kahn, Guilded Age.
