By now, to those familiar with the world of graphic novels and comics, The Eternaut is the stuff of legend, and I'm not just saying that. Its conception by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and eventual publication in an Argentinian paper, Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal from 1957 to 1959, gave birth to what we today consider a complex, politically allegorical graphic novel not seen before. As much a defining pop-cultural, sci-fi post apocalyptic horror as the American Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Eternaut presents us with a society on the brink of destruction from an unseen foe capable of manipulating others to do their dirty work. It is a tale that, however glum it may appear at times, still manages to celebrate the human spirit more than its tough exterior would suggest.
Released for the first time in English language in this 2015 Edition, The Eternaut (Fantagraphics, 368 pages, Hard Cover) - illustrated by the Argentine comic book artist Fransisco Solano Lopez - features an average everyman hero, Juan Silva, and his desperate attempt to save his city of Buenos Aires from invading, vicious extra terrestrials. Silva is aided in his plight by a few close friends: Professor Favalli, the brainy, know-it-all wise man of the group who most often has the best possible solution for any sticky situation; and Franco, a tough but compassionate metal worker with whom he often plays cards.
As the mysterious "snow" begins to fall in Buenos Aires, Juan and company soon discover that it is of lethal nature: everyone who comes into contact with it dies immediately. Protagonists are unable to make contact with their neighbors or the rest of the world, so they create special rubber suits - an image of Juan Silva in the aforementioned outfit and glass mask, resembling a high-tech deep sea diver, is an iconic illustration in the comic book pop-culture world, and especially in Argentina's capital - which enables them to remain resistant to the snow and its deadly effects. While venturing outside, Juan and Favalli rescue young Pablo, a wisecracking boy who will serve as comic relief during the story's rather gloomy tone.
Our protagonists eventually join a small army, and in their fight versus the alien enemy, they will encounter giant beetles ("cascarudos", to quote Oesterheld accurately) who fire an utterly destructive white laser-like light at them; large buffalo-shaped beasts, Gurbos, who are capable of crushing and stomping everything in front of them to smithereens; and humans who've been 'turned' and are now working for the enemy, referred to as robot-men. There are also several copies of Hands (Manos), a slightly more intelligent species of their enemy, with white, slicked-back hair resembling a post-modern Wall Street broker. Hands get their name from their abnormality that allows them to have some twenty-something fingers on their hand, and this gift enables them to operate complex machinery and technology that is too advanced for human comprehension.
Oesterheld and Lopez's creation some sixty years ago still stands the test of time. Their characters and the potentially apocalyptic scenario and setting they find themselves in very much mirrors a possible reality that could, at any given moment, take place in our own world (especially given the socially divisive rhetoric of the current POTUS). Juan Silva and his friends are ordinary men with very much un-extraordinary powers, yet their predicament doesn't leave them much time to debate themselves or each other about what the right thing to do, at this most catastrophic time, actually is. Favalli sums it up rather well: "... We were hunting each other like animals... now, knowing that our enemies are extra-terrestrial beings, we're all brothers."
The stretched-out, protracted second act of The Eternaut, a section in which a colossal War takes center stage in the heart of Buenos Aires - and where much is shot at, blown up and destroyed ad nauseam - is perhaps a bit too long. Oesterheld's anti-dictatorial hyperbole, established early on and effectively transitioned into the "action" packed follow up to the spooky and memorable intro, resembles a jam-packed movie where suddenly the characters and their personal plights takes a surprising second seat to a military-in-action fifty-plus pages extravaganza. Since one could easily make an argument that The Eternaut is - at an excess of 350 pages - already too lengthy, one does wonder what it would've looked like if it was tidier and smoother, especially at its center.
In the closing pages, we're left to decide for ourselves if what we've just read has indeed been a factual event within the confines of Oesterheld and Lopez's imagination, as the narrator Silva has assured his audience of one, or if he's just a slightly deranged man whose own fantasy has taken a turn for the worse. Did this Eternaut - or traveler for eternity - really experience world wide mass attack on Earth, and then accidentally get lost through the time-space continuum, and happened to find his wife and daughter by pure chance in the right year? Or has his sanity abandoned him to such a degree that everything we've just read is a fabrication of his damaged psyche? Will we ever know? Perhaps one day, if and when The Eternaut should visit one of us and recount his life's hardships personally, we'll be able to arrive at such a conclusion on our own.
B+
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