World Languages and Cultures Publications World Languages and Cultures 2012 Oesterheld’s Iconic and Ironic Eternautas Rachel H. Haywood Ferreira Iowa State University,
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[email protected]. Oesterheld’s Iconic and Ironic Eternautas Abstract When speaking of Héctor Germán Oesterheld and his Eternautas series of comics, we are speaking of multiple and interlocking levels of icons. Oesterheld first began the historieta [comic] about the time-traveling Juan Salvo, known as the “Eternauta,” in the late 1950s, later revisiting it in the 1960s and 1970s. In the three Eternauta narratives in question,1 a group of intrepid technologically savvy individuals struggle against a deadly phosphorescent snowfall and a series of alien species only to have the news of their local victory obliterated by nuclear devastation and alien treachery. Attempts to avoid this near-future reality for Buenos Aires and/or the reconstruction of the city occupy the later installments of the series.