The Eternaut by Héctor Germán Oesterheld

'Once I had seen those pictures, I couldn't forget them,' Anna Kemper told DW. She saw pictures of Oesterheld's four young, lively daughters, who lost their lives fighting the regime. She had learned about their story in 2009 while doing research in Argentina for another article. In January 2015 she published a long-form article about Oesterheld's tragically disappeared family.

To underline this publication, the Literature House in Stuttgart is showing a comic exhibition called 'The Myth Eternauta - Héctor Germán Oesterheld,' held until April 15, 2016.Īnna Kemper, journalist for the German weekly 'Die Zeit,' initiated the project. It is now finding its way to the German market: In book form, the science fiction classic was translated to German and published in January 2016. Oesterheld's comic, with its impressive drawings by Francisco Solano López, became a huge success in Argentina.

It has since been established that his daughters were murdered, and it is believed that Oesterheld himself was murdered by the regime in 1979, but his body was never found. Héctor Germán Oesterheld disappeared during Argentina's military dictatorship Known as the 'desaparecidos,' they were tortured, kidnapped and killed. Oesterheld and his four daughters joined a leftist guerilla group opposed to the dictatorship and ended up among the 30,000 Argentines who vanished during that period. In real-life Argentina, the military junta under Jorge Rafael Videla imposed totalitarian rule in 1976, terrorizing the population. In his comic, aliens mercilessly exterminated the population in Buenos Aires.

Twenty years after writing this comic, Oesterheld experienced a similar fate as his character's. The Argentine comic book writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld was the author of the science fiction comic 'El Eternauta,' published in 1957 - and again in December 2015 in English under the name 'The Eternaut.' He is the 'Eternaut,' an 'eternal traveler,' who ends up traveling through time and space in search of his family. A clever father, Juan Salvo, decides to fight the powerful invaders who remain hidden and anonymous, remotely controlling their terrifying pawns. They send toxic snow, deadly beetles and stinging monsters. Aliens take power in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires.

The Eternaut by Héctor Germán Oesterheld