Around 10 years ago, I started reading El Eternauta, a classic argentinian comic from the 50’s. Someone borrowed me a copy and I guess I read half of it before I returned it. Then a couple of years ago during a travel to Buenos Aires, we meet with some good friends and visited the bookstore Ateneo Grand Splendid, there I found the full comic in a single book, a full edition, so I bought it.
I was hoping to read it right away, but it stood in my night table for months. Waiting its turn.
I am not a huge fan of comics, I do like some comics like Mafalda, Patoruzú and Patoruzito, Mayor y Menor, Asterix and some others, I usually prefer reading books. But El Eternauta is an Argentinian classic, is an iconic one like Maradona, Gardel, Evita, Messi… I wanted to read it.
Recently, when Netflix announced they were going to release the TV Show, I did the effort and re-started reading the comic, from scratch, and I finished it right before starting the series.
I won’t share any spoilers here, the book contains a powerful and heartbreaking story. The drawings are from Solano López. The story was written by Germán Oesterheld, when you read about his personal life is truly 💔.
First what’s first: this is a very political story, filled with multiple layers and contexts, you can enjoy it at all levels of course, you don’t need to know Argentinian history for it to make sense.
The Netflix adaptation is great, I think it works much better for our modern times, and you can totally read the comic book, and see the TV Series in any order, you will find many differences and parallelisms, the good thing is… you can enjoy both because one doesn’t spoil the other.
There’s a lot of Argentinian history here, and many tiny details of our culture, but there is something profoundly human and global too: the eternal fight between the pulsions of death and life, creation and destruction, love and hate, the tension between the group and the individual.
While the story unveils you might experience fear, uncomfort, and also a nostalgic and romantic feeling that fosters hope and faith, a sense of community and collaboration, even in the worst possible scenario.
To me, this is the most valuable thing of the whole story:
“The true hero of El Eternauta is a collective hero, a group of people. It thus reflects, although unintentionally, my innermost feeling: the only valid hero is the “group” hero, never the individual hero, the solo hero.”
Héctor Germán Oesterheld, El Eternauta
This is the motto all over the place. The concept of ” colective hero”.
We are so used to the individual heros, to superpowerful person that is able to fix everything by himself, in Rambo mode… but in this story there’s no individual hero, the “hero” is a collective construct. It is the group, not the individual. It focus on solidarity and teamwork.
And in these times we are living, I find this very inspiring.
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