Mano a mano en la lucha intergaláctica / Hand in Hand in the Intergalactic Fight: Braided Images in El Eternauta
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Abstract/Artist Statement
El Eternauta, an Argentinian science fiction graphic novel written in the 1950s by Hector Germán Oesterheld and illustrated by Francisco Solano López, tells the story of a man named Juan Salvo who, along with his friends, must fight to survive a radioactive snow and an extraterrestrial invasion of Buenos Aires in the 1960s. Due to the increasingly political tone of the remake (1969) and sequel (1975) to El Eternauta, as well as the life path of Oesterheld, who joined the leftist militia los Montoneros and was disappeared by the Argentinian dictatorship, critical readings of this text often interpret the fictitious resistance to the alien invasion as a symbol of the radical insurrection of the 1970s (despite the possible anachronism of that timeline with regard to the first Eternauta). The focus on the author and the narrative has resulted in dearth of scholarship examining the tremendous work of Solano López. This project approaches the relationship between image and text by using Thierry Groenstein’s theory of braiding, which is a kind of visual motif that links a series of repeated images throughout a graphic novel. Each term in a series echoes the preceding ones, creating a citational effect that enriches the story with an additional layer of meaning. In El Eternauta, the braiding of various characters’ hands produces two visual theses: one, that hands, useful in life and a distinct loss in death, are a metonym for the body, a resource as fundamental to the resistance, solidarity and humanity as the mind; and two, hands are a way to understand our humanity as a link not only among ourselves but to all citizens of the universe.
Mentor Name
Maria Bustos Fernandez
Mano a mano en la lucha intergaláctica / Hand in Hand in the Intergalactic Fight: Braided Images in El Eternauta
UC 330
El Eternauta, an Argentinian science fiction graphic novel written in the 1950s by Hector Germán Oesterheld and illustrated by Francisco Solano López, tells the story of a man named Juan Salvo who, along with his friends, must fight to survive a radioactive snow and an extraterrestrial invasion of Buenos Aires in the 1960s. Due to the increasingly political tone of the remake (1969) and sequel (1975) to El Eternauta, as well as the life path of Oesterheld, who joined the leftist militia los Montoneros and was disappeared by the Argentinian dictatorship, critical readings of this text often interpret the fictitious resistance to the alien invasion as a symbol of the radical insurrection of the 1970s (despite the possible anachronism of that timeline with regard to the first Eternauta). The focus on the author and the narrative has resulted in dearth of scholarship examining the tremendous work of Solano López. This project approaches the relationship between image and text by using Thierry Groenstein’s theory of braiding, which is a kind of visual motif that links a series of repeated images throughout a graphic novel. Each term in a series echoes the preceding ones, creating a citational effect that enriches the story with an additional layer of meaning. In El Eternauta, the braiding of various characters’ hands produces two visual theses: one, that hands, useful in life and a distinct loss in death, are a metonym for the body, a resource as fundamental to the resistance, solidarity and humanity as the mind; and two, hands are a way to understand our humanity as a link not only among ourselves but to all citizens of the universe.