Comics pioneer Héctor Oesterheld and The Eternaut

Buenos Aires-born comics writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld was nearing his 59th birthday when heavily militarized Argentine death squads kidnapped him in the spring of 1977.

Government officials found the political themes in Oesterheld’s very popular comics — among them, the graphic biography of revolutionary “Che” Guevara that Oesterheld had penned with Argentine father-and-son artists Alberto and Enrique Breccia — cause for punishment.

In The Eternaut, it's as if he was telegraphing the horrors that would befall him at the hands of his own repellent government -- my new Hyperallergic piece is on Oesterheld and his work.

This collected edition of The Eternaut was published by Fantagraphics in 2015. (See also my post on Mort Cinder, which was written by Oesterheld and illustrated by Alberto Breccia.)