To meet El Eternauta: an exhibition at the UBA reveals the secrets of the classic

A silent snowfall falls on Buenos Aires. At Juan Salvo 's home, he and his family watch suspiciously through the window. Favalli, Salvo's scientist friend, immediately senses the danger. Within minutes, the phones stop working and the city fills with bodies : those who came into contact with the snow have died. Thus begins The Eternaut , one of the most emblematic works of Argentine science fiction, written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and illustrated by Francisco Solano López.

✒️ The Eternaut. The fiction that traveled through time. We're opening a graphic exhibition, which will be open for one month, and we'll be sharing a talk with Soledad Quereilhac and Martín Greco, researchers from AHIRA.

📌 Tuesday, April 8 at 6 p.m. in the Bonifacio Hall. pic.twitter.com/4HBZeKmDag

— Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, UBA (@filo_uba) April 4, 2025

Just days before the series premieres on Netflix , a research and teaching team from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UBA, made up of Martín Greco and Soledad Quereilhac, invites us to go back in time to the 1950s, when this comic strip first appeared, which still retains its narrative power today.

The exhibition "The Eternaut. The Fiction That Traveled Through Time ," at the Bonifacio 1347, Caballito, exhibition aims to reflect on the context that made its emergence possible and explore its multiple meanings : Who are its heroes and villains? Did it already contain a political message? How is the comic strip still relevant and how is it renewed with each new reading?

Soledad Quereilhac, professor of Argentine Literature at the University of Buenos Aires and a researcher at Conicet (Conicet for its acronym in Spanish), and Jerónimo Ledesma, the Faculty's Research Secretary, spoke with Clarín about this proposal, which can be visited throughout May.

The exhibition seeks to reconstruct the original publication scope of El Eternauta , which appeared in Hora Cero Semanal , a magazine published by the Frontera label, founded by Oesterheld with his brother Jorge.

“After leaving Abril, Oesterheld created his own comic book publishing house . His goal was clear: to write good Argentine stories. He set this out from the first issue of Hora Cero, which published the first installment of El Eternauta . The comic was developed over two years, with weekly installments, which created a very strong bond with readers,” explains Quereilhac.

The exhibition also explores the background of this work . "We're going to look back at the years before, when Oesterheld was a scriptwriter for publishers such as Códex and Abril, with comics like Bull Rocket and Sergeant Kirk. He also worked for the magazine Más Allá, where he contributed scientific comics and short stories. It's even suspected that he served as its editorial secretary," the researcher adds.

But the exhibition isn't limited to a historical focus. It also proposes a reading of El Eternauta from the present . "We're interested in recovering the original context of the 1950s, a period marked by the so-called 'golden age' of adventure comics, but also by the rise of Peronism and the subsequent Frondicism," says Quereilhac.

Along these lines, he proposes a reading hypothesis : “In El Eternauta we witness a utopian vision of resistance and adventure with unmistakably Argentine features.”

Although on the surface it tells of an alien invasion, as always in literature, it is about much more: “ It breathes a utopian view of everyday life , shared codes, recognizable spaces, encouraged by an optimistic technical-scientific imaginary of local imprint, which contrasts with the international pessimism of the time, marked by nuclear weapons and biological warfare,” he notes.

The opposition between "them" and "us" that runs through the plot also has a national dimension. "This narrative operation has a strong influence on the comic's reception over time and its consolidation as a classic of Argentine fiction . More than the destruction of the world, in El Eternauta we read a celebration of our customs and forms of social organization, in a format—the comic—that combines elements of prestigious art with those of popular art," says Quereilhac.

The exhibition coincides with National Science Week, an initiative that seeks to promote dialogue about the present and future of Argentine science .

Jerónimo Ledesma explains: “We thought it was relevant that Philosophy and Literature add an activity this week about a work that also considers the future . Hora Cero Semanal is fully digitized in the AHIRA archive, which is currently being supported with a grant from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). And it's clear, listening to Soledad, that research into our culture is as crucial as research into chemical or technological phenomena. Only the method changes.”

Regarding the Netflix series, Ledesma comments: “We still don't know what this new version will be like, but the mere fact that El Eternauta is once again being serialized and adapted into an audiovisual format makes us very curious . There have been previous attempts to bring it to film that didn't come to fruition, and this particular project suffered delays due to the pandemic. Now it's an ambitious production, with a great director and top-notch actors.”

Adaptation presents challenges , especially because many readers have deeply rooted images of the original characters.

"As with any adaptation, there's excitement about who will play whom, how the settings will be translated , how the era will be represented, and what will happen to the figure of the collective hero, so central to the original comic. Ideally, this version by Bruno Stagnaro would combine the power of entertainment with intelligent fiction," he concludes.

The Faculty is already planning an activity following the series' premiere, which will include a discussion between production artists and UBA researchers. A new way to continue reading—and watching— El Eternauta , almost seven decades after its first snowfall.