The Eternalist

For most of what we usually call the general public, El eternauta is now a Netflix series starring Ricardo Darín. The first season has premiered, and a second part is already confirmed. A few weeks ago, during the Buenos Aires Book Fair, the city was adorned with advertisements and also with colorful life-size models promoting the series, bearing slogans like "The old works," referring to the fact that, in television fiction, the cars that move are the older models. In short, the power of audiovisual media, which is always enormous in its impact and budget. The series is already an international success and restores some of the national pride of a country that has been mired in a permanent crisis for years. The setting is truly Argentine, full of idioms and nods to the middle class of a country that is no longer the same. But I'm not here today to rant about the television series, but rather to recount the comic, the graphic novel—as it's now fashionable to say—or the comic-book serial that inspires this new television artifact. And, by the way, a side note: the series is very unfaithful to the original, no matter how attractive it is, but that would also lead to a long discussion and another article.

The original El eternauta comic strip was published in Argentina in installments between 1957 and 1959 in the magazine Hora Cero Semanal. 106 black-and-white episodes were drawn by Francisco Solano López and with an original script by Héctor Germán Oesterheld. The protagonist, El eternauta, received his name, after becoming a time traveler, from a philosopher from the late 21st century. He is a pilgrim of the centuries and appears to a comic book writer and tells his story, after a disconcerting first sentence: "I'm on Earth, I suppose." How Juan Salvo, for that is the protagonist's name, came to become El eternauta will not be revealed until the end of this unbridled serial.

Oesterheld, the screenwriter, ended up kidnapped, tortured and probably murdered in 1977.

Because the story it tells is different: that of a truco game in middle-class Buenos Aires interrupted by a snowfall following a US nuclear explosion in the Pacific. The snowfall will prove deadly, and from there, without revealing any further twists and turns, we have a story with two distinct parts. The first, more familiar and social, is the struggle for survival and reflects the divisions and changes of ordinary people facing cosmic cataclysm. Later, the invading aliens will appear, with a notable degree of evil and brutality. There is a whole gallery of enemies: beetles, gurbos, robot men, hands, and the mysterious "they," whom the reader doesn't know who or what they are, but who manipulate everyone else. In the very long second part, to fight them, Salvo and his friends must join the ranks of a human army fighting against the invader. The military helmets of these increasingly committed conscripts are reminiscent of those worn by the Nazis (they were the ones worn at the time in the southern country), and more than one scene reveals that society has become militarized in order to survive.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to rescue the second part of the comic, which is currently unavailable in Spain.

Planeta Cómic has just released a new edition in landscape format with more than fifty retouched illustrations "without altering the original spirit of the work." It's a good edition, in hardcover and with prologues by Guillermo Saccomanno and Juan Sasturain, but I haven't seen much difference from previous ones. This one is faithful to the spirit of what began as mass entertainment with a science fiction story rooted in the social reality of Buenos Aires. In 1957, Oesterheld was 38 years old, while Solano was only 29.

Oesterheld strengthened his political commitment over the years and ended up kidnapped, tortured, and presumably murdered by the dictatorship in 1977. He was a Montonero and already sixty years old. They also kidnapped and murdered—disappeared—each of his four daughters. Two of them were pregnant, to add horror to the horror. Three of his sons-in-law also disappeared. A terrible Argentine story.

In the turbulent Argentina of those years, Perón had seized power and the air force bombed the Plaza de Mayo; naval ships from the Río de la Plata also bombed the Ministry of the Army. These were episodes of a near civil war to which Héctor Germán Oesterheld (HGO) was particularly sensitive. A geologist by training, his talent was that of a storyteller who worked with Hugo Pratt and Alberto Breccia, among other artists, such as Francisco Solano López himself, a self-taught artist who proved well suited to the nuances and moral challenges of the protagonists of El eternauta.

What began as an adventure serial would transform in 1976 into a sequel, El eternauta II , much darker, colder, and more ruthless. Solano also drew it, but was displeased with the character's evolution, which prioritized the pursuit of freedom over all other considerations. This sequel is currently unavailable in Spain. But I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to complete the full cycle of El eternauta, even though it may irritate and annoy many of its fans. For some, HGO betrayed itself with this more philosophical and much more dehumanizing sequel.

This comic will likely also make you think and compare it with Argentina's past and very recent events. It's a comic that doesn't compel, but it helps you reflect. And there's a connection, in my personal pantheon, with Starship Troopers, the 1959 novel by Robert A. Heinlein, which Paul Verhoeven adapted into a film in 1997 and which is probably one of the most reviled and misunderstood films in the history of cinema. Where many saw a fascist exaltation, I saw a cruel satire of humanity in uniform and in combat. Something that I believe also lurks in the background of El eternauta .