The Eternaut

The Eternaut by Héctor Germán Oesterheld
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When a deadly glowing snow falls, Juan Salvo and his friends must band together to survive. But what or who created a snow that is deadly to the touch?

I cut and pasted my teaser for The Eternaut: 1969 because that story, in part, is a retelling of this one. I'm doing Fantagraphics February again this year and this book was brought back into print just in time.

Drawn in a style evocative to EC Comics, this strip took Argentina by storm in 1957 and is still the quintessential Argentinian comic. Juan Salvo, his wife and daughter, and his friends find themselves in the midst of an alien invasion. Killer snow is just the tip of the iceberg.

The political subtext is thick enough to spread on toast. Born out of fear of the United States and Russia destroying the world in a nuclear war and the tumultuous Argentinian government at the time, the book has a bleak, paranoid feel. Juan and company creating isolation suits and venturing out into the snow barely scratches the surface.

I guess you'd call this survival horror with an alien backdrop. Juan and the gang scrounging for supplies and sneaking around to avoid detection reminds me of any number of zombie apocalypse scenarios. I wouldn't say it's misery porn but things seem damn bleak most of the time. By the time the meaning of The Eternaut was revealed, I was ready for the book to be over, as enjoyable and well-crafted as it is.

The Eternaut is a bleak epic and an amazing work of sequential art. Four out of five stars.

View all my reviews