Martín Oesterheld: “With 'El Eternauta' my grandfather anticipated his own destiny”

With El Eternauta , one of the most popular television series of 2025, Martín Oesterheld seeks to vindicate his grandfather Héctor Germán , creator of the story through a comic , disappeared in 1977 by the Argentine dictatorship, and who was one of the pioneers in turning cartoons into a political weapon.

“The story of El Eternauta defined a time in political terms in a different way. There's something that connects this tragic story with a very particular fiction; it's a circular narrative in which my grandfather, at some point, anticipated his own destiny ,” Oesterheld's grandson explains in an interview.

Known as the first graphic novel in Latin America, it was adapted into a series for the first time on Netflix. It tells the story of its protagonist, Juan Salvo, who survived a toxic snowfall that killed a large part of the Buenos Aires population and culminated in an alien invasion.

Oesterheld, scriptwriter and creator of the work together with cartoonist Francisco Solano López, was disappeared during the last Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983).

Although Martín remembers that one cannot forget the coups d'état that took place in Argentina for 60 years to understand the political chalice of El Eternauta (1957).

“( The Eternaut ) was written under the categories of 20th-century Argentina. It was the generation that began the resistance in the 1940s, but especially in the 1970s. In the comic, there's a very clear connection between the alien invasion and the oppression of the time, which couldn't be handled,” he comments.

He also linked the events of the play with the "executive execution" dictatorship that overthrew the government of Juan Domingo Perón , remembered for the shootings of 1956 and, to a lesser extent, according to Oesterheld, for the bombing of the Plaza de Mayo in which more than 300 people died.

"The characters in the play, who travel from the outskirts to the center of Buenos Aires, are an imaginary way of connecting these events . My grandfather, at that time, was connected to it, but he wasn't yet very active in politics," he argues.

The second part or reinvention of El Eternauta in 1969 or the graphic biographies of Evita Perón or Che Guevara would be the scripts for which Oesterheld would ultimately end up being persecuted due to their political content.

"In the end, my grandfather decided to star in the adventure he had put his heart and soul into writing," explains Martín.

Since the publishing house Fantagraphics decided to publish El Eternauta for the first time in the United States in 2015, the popularity of the acclaimed comic has led Oesterheld to meet with various producers interested in bringing his grandfather's story to Hollywood , although in the end he decided on Netflix.

"It was like a leap of faith, and at some point it had to be done. It was a promise I'd made for as long as I can remember, and I think it had to be done," confesses the series' creative consultant and executive producer.

Just as the 2010 comic The Walking Dead —created by Robert Kirkman—was a feat that changed the comic book and television series industry with its adaptation, El Eternauta “opens the door” for other works with similar production to be made in Latin America and in Spanish.

The series' huge success in foreign countries like Brazil, Germany, and the United States is an opportunity , says Oesterheld, for productions "four times smaller" to attract foreigners to discover Argentina and Latin America.

"The consumer world is saying, 'There has to be something else like this very strange series in the same town.' That something more to discover says a lot about us, about how Argentinians and Latin Americans have a unique way of seeing the world , not just the one from the 1960s," he concludes.

El Eternauta will have a second season – scheduled for 2027 – which will conclude the adaptation of Oesterheld's work, a series that is expected to be even more successful after having surprised half the world.