The Eternaut

with the magazine Hora Cero The Eternauta was first published in the first issue of the comic magazine anthology Hora Cero by Editorial Frontera, on September 4, 1957. It was written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld, author of all the comics in the anthology, and was illustrated by Francisco Solano López. Solano López had been working with Oesterheld on the comic (), and although he was still interested in science fiction, he asked for a story with less fantasy. "I was doing Rolo in Hora Cero, I wanted to do science fiction, but with a more realistic approach, something more committed, closer to the reader, and that gave Héctor the idea of the Eternaut". Hora Cero was closed shortly after the story's conclusion, as artists found it more lucrative to work abroad than in Frontera, Oesterheld knew little of finances, and interest in serial comics declined. Editorial Frontera was then absorbed by Editorial Emilio Ramírez. Emilio Ramírez then sold the titles to the magazine "Vea y lea" in 1961, which republished the story. The republication made slight changes to the originals, removing the opening panels and some closing panels whose texts were redundant with the texts of the following entry, to allow a smoother read. Oesterheld wrote the plots intended for the sequel as a novel, which was published by Emilio Ramírez. The publication was nominated for the 2016 Eisner Award in the categories for Best U.S. Edition of International Material, Best Publication Design, and Best Archival Collection/Project—Strips. It received the award in the last category. Copyright disputes , artist of the comic Héctor Oesterheld sold the copyright of several of his characters, including the Eternaut, when Editorial Frontera was closed. Initially those rights were acquired by Editorial Emilio Ramírez, who then sold them to others. Alfredo Scutti from Ediciones Record acquired the rights in the 1970s and republished the story in 1976. Oesterheld and Solano López signed a contract with Scutti, confirming his rights over the character, in exchange for part of the money received by Ediciones Record for the republication. As it was a success, they signed a similar contract to write the sequel, "El Eternauta Segunda Parte". Oesterheld was killed by the military and Solano López left for Europe shortly after the sequel was finished. The heirs of Oesterheld were his widow Elsa Sánchez de Oesterheld and his grandchildren, still minors. Her lawyer said that she did not have the legal rights to sell the rights to the character, as she had ignored the rights of Oesterheld's grandchildren. Scutti based his defense on the contracts signed with Héctor while he was still alive, earlier than the one with Sánchez de Oesterheld, and considered that she was mixing commercial deals with personal tragedies. He also provided documentation proving that she authorized the making of the third sequel for another payment. Solano López also complained about the contract, claiming that it ignored his own rights over the character. When he left for Europe, knowing of Sánchez de Oesterheld's economic problems, he told her that he gave her full leeway to profit from the character the way she saw fit. He clarified later that he never meant to renounce his share of the copyright over the character, and that it was only a verbal proposal with no legal weight. He pointed out that the document made between Ediciones Record and Sánchez de Oesterheld described The Eternaut as a literary work, created solely by Héctor Oesterheld, with no mention of him. And, although Oesterheld would write a literary novel about the character later, it was born as a comic book character, with a joint work of the writer and the artist. Sánchez de Oesterheld did not agree with that view and considered Solano López a mere interpreter of the work of her husband. She also said that The Eternaut was an idea that Oesterheld had for some years before he started working on it. The comic El mundo arrepentido, made by Solano López and Pol, was also initially a source of conflict. Oesterheld's grandsons said that new projects involving the character, such as sequels, merchandising, or adaptations, had to have the approval of Solano López, but that he did not have the right to decide such things completely by himself. Both parties eventually agreed to work together on the new release. The judiciary ruled in 1996 that the sale of the characters of Oesterheld to Emilio Ramírez was null and void, restoring them to Oesterheld's heirs. Ediciones Record started their own case, stating that they owned the rights to the franchise. Although initially the lower courts ruled favorably to Ediciones Record, in 2018 the Supreme Court ruled favorably to the heirs of Oesterheld and closed the case, with the vote of Ricardo Lorenzetti, Elena Highton de Nolasco, Juan Carlos Maqueda, Horacio Rosatti and Carlos Rosenkrantz. ==Series==

Oesterheld, the author of the comic, appears as a character at the beginning of the story. He is writing late at night when a man suddenly appears out of thin air in his room. He introduces himself as Juan Salvo, and narrates his story. All the comic is thus narrated by Salvo, in first-person narrative. Salvo lived with his wife Elena and his daughter Martita. According to Salvo, mysterious deadly snowfall suddenly covers Buenos Aires and his neighborhood in the nearby Vicente López, wiping out all life upon touch. Salvo and his family survive because his home was completely closed. At the time of the snowfall, he was playing truco with his friends, Favalli, Lucas, and Polski. Polski tries to return to his home, worried about his family, and dies moments after leaving, having come into contact with the snowflakes. The others prepare insulated suits to be able to leave the house and gather supplies. A young child, Pablo, joins them, and a deranged survivor kills Lucas. Realizing that the catastrophe generated a violent state of anarchy, they try to escape from Buenos Aires, but before doing so they are recruited by an improvised army. Salvo, Favalli, and Pablo join them, while Elena and Martita stay home. It turns out that the snowfall was part of an ongoing alien invasion. The army first attacks a group of giant insects similar to beetles, armed with giant lightthrowers, at the General Paz highway. All beetles have devices on their necks that reveal that the real invaders control them from afar. The army sets its base inside the River Plate stadium, as its enormous walls could serve as a trench against the lightthrowers. Salvo and Franco, a metal worker recruited by the army, leave the stadium during the night to gather intelligence. They discover that the beetles are controlled by an alien known as "Hand", because of their hands with several fingers. The "Hand" also controls other survivors turned into automatons by a similar device. The alien is in turn also controlled by aliens that he does not name; later referred to as just "Them". The army is then lured into a trap at Plaza Italia. They are decimated by giant beasts known as "Gurbos", and only Salvo, Favalli and Franco survive. They seek further intelligence and find the main invasion force at the Plaza del Congreso. They blow up the dome with "Them" and escape; they find Pablo and the historian Mosca, who survived the attack at Plaza Italia but got separated from them. They leave just before a nuke fired by foreign countries against the invaders destroys Buenos Aires. The aliens continue the invasion and lure the pockets of survivors to fake "snow-free zones". Favalli, Pablo and Mosca allow themselves to be captured and turned into automatons so that Salvo and his family can escape. They seize a spaceship and Salvo accidentally turns on a time machine while randomly pressing buttons. He ends up in a pocket universe, with Elena and Martita stranded somewhere else. He eventually learns to travel between universes and timelines, which is why he appeared at Oesterheld's house. After finishing his narration Salvo realizes that he is in Buenos Aires, only a few years before the invasion. He runs back home, reunites with his family in a stable time loop, and forgets about it all. Oesterheld, unable to do anything else about the future invasion, decides to write a comic about it. ==Reception==

Martín Hadis wrote in the prologue for the Fantagraphics edition that one of the strongest points of the story for the Argentine audience was the sight of an alien invasion in Buenos Aires, with its distinctive buildings and monuments disfigured or destroyed by the alien devices or the war actions; most works of fiction about the theme are set in other countries, such as the United States. However, he also pointed out that the story has appeal beyond that, as it has been successful in Spain, Mexico, Italy, Greece, Croatia, France, etc.; where the sight of Buenos Aires would be less meaningful. He points that the scientific aspects of the alien invasion are mostly handwaved and that the story narrates a global disaster from the point of view of a small group of survivors. Hadis explains the appeal of the series in the contrast between home, family and friendship with death and the utterly alien, an appeal that would transcend localisms. Rachel Cooke from The Guardian praises the ingenuity of the characters to survive truly hopeless situations. and Fernando García considers it instead an allegory of class struggle. Tom Shapira from The Comics Journal says that, adding to the frequent in-story references to Robinson Crusoe, he found the story similar to Moby-Dick, as it features a hero who is actually a witness of the acts of heroism carried out by others. Shapira also criticized some aspects of the story, such as the presence of flying saucers that he found to make the story look dated. He also criticized the lack of relevant female characters, stating that Elena and Martita had no actual weight in the plot save as reminders for the protagonist of the family he longs for. Shapira additionally criticized what he perceived as the over-reliance on cliffhangers, while also noting that the story was initially published in serialized form, which left several cliffhangers at the moments when the original publication likely ended the chapters. In 2009, the Congress of Argentina declared 4 September, the day of the first publication of The Eternaut, "Day of the Argentine Comic"; in 2010, the Argentine Ministry of Education ordered several thousand copies of The Eternaut to be distributed in secondary schools. President Néstor Kirchner expressed his admiration for The Eternaut; in 2010, Kirchner ran an advertisement of himself drawn as the Eternaut in support of Cristina Kirchner's presidential campaign. The advertising, known as the "Nestornauta", was later used after the death of Néstor Kirchner a short time later. The "Nestornauta" is based upon one of the best known images of the character, used in the front cover of the 1976 reissue of the first story. The image keeps the snowflakes around the character, but removes the shotgun, as it could be associated with the violent guerrillas of the 1970s. It also changed the face of the character: besides using the face of Kirchner, it changes the grim and determined gesture of the original with a jovial and smiling face. ==Adaptations==

Film and TV , lead actor of The Eternaut. In 1968, advertisement production company Gil & Bertolini acquired the rights to The Eternaut to make an animated television series, to be presented at the First World Comic Book Biennial. Each episode would be introduced by Oesterheld himself, and the animation would be rotoscoped, a very expensive technique at the time. The project was cancelled after the production of a 24-minute pilot. For the following twenty years, financial and copyrights problems prevented different adaptations of The Eternaut for film and television. In 1995, there was a miniseries project led by a TV network from Buenos Aires, with special effects in charge of computer animation company Aicon. A preliminary contract had been signed with a major Hollywood studio. In 2008, director Lucrecia Martel was invited for a film adaptation of The Eternaut. The script would have taken place in the present day, but the Oesterheld family felt it to be too different from the source material. The producers stepped down and the project went stagnant. In February 2020, it was announced that The Eternaut would be adapted into a TV series for Netflix, The Eternaut. The series was directed by Bruno Stagnaro and is contextualized in the 2020s. Ricardo Darín stars as the main character, with the cast consisting of Carla Peterson, Marcelo Subiotto, César Troncoso, Andrea Pietra and . Theater Jorge Claudio Morhain wrote El viajero de Eternidad (The Traveler of Eternity), a stage play in three acts published in 2003 in book format. It was performed in 2007 as part of the homages of the 30th anniversary of Oesterheld's disappearance. Another theater adaptation entitled Zona liberada, an experimental play, premiered in Buenos Aires in 2007 . It was created and performed by the group Carne de Cañón and casts the comic's themes and imagery into a contemporary context. The production had the blessing of Elsa Oesterheld and Solano López Music Mexican alternative rock band Novo Pilota from Ciudad Juárez created a concept album called E.T.E.R.N.A.U.T.A. (2010), which is rife with lyrical and thematic references to El Eternauta, drawing parallels between the comic's besieged Buenos Aires and the violence afflicting Ciudad Juárez. In 2011, a multi-artist musical tribute was organized in La Plata entitled "Los Ellos,” after the alien invaders in the comic, which resulted in a compilation album featuring songs by several different bands inspired by scenes and themes from the comic. Argentine rock band Fútbol included a track entitled “El asedio de River Plate” on their 2011 album La Gallina, directly alluding to the Eternauta's climactic battle at River Plate Stadium. In 2013 Juan Maicas composed "Zamba para Juan Salvo" named after the protagonist from "El Eternauta." It follows the traditional zamba style but its lyrics are based on the comic. in 2018 the Argentine space-rock band La Chatarra Espacial released the album "Batalla del Tiempo" (“Battle of Time”), whose title track's lyrics explicitly cite El Eternauta. ==References==