As fans await El Eternauta 2, a new book opens another door into Oesterheld’s science fiction

While the second season of El Eternauta has been confirmed but still has no release date, Héctor Germán Oesterheld has returned to the spotlight through a new book. Minotauro has published El árbol de la buena muerte y otros cuentos, a collection of science-fiction stories by the creator of the Argentine classic.

The season has not yet begun filming. At the end of August, actor Ricardo Darín said the team was still working “with all its might” on the scripts and adding the “final brushstroke” before shooting. The wait has created an opening for readers to move in the opposite direction, from the Netflix series back to Oesterheld’s writing.

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with all its might

El Eternauta, first published in installments in 1957, became a global phenomenon after the Netflix series reached millions of viewers nearly seven decades later. The new collection appears alongside Argentina’s Comic Book Day, celebrated every September 4, the date in 1957 when the first issue of Hora Cero Semanal appeared with the opening of El Eternauta, illustrated by Francisco Solano López.

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final brushstroke

Oesterheld was also inducted into the Will Eisner Awards Hall of Fame at San Diego Comic-Con in July. His grandson Martín used one word to connect him with his characters: survivor. “In some way, these stories survived too,” he said at the ceremony.

That idea of survival runs through the family history behind the work. Editorial Frontera operated from the family home in Béccar, the same house where El Eternauta begins. The house held both the family and a small factory of fictional worlds, producing science fiction, westerns, adventures and war stories. Martín recalled that his grandfather did not talk down to readers. He brought different worlds to Argentine streets in a language of his own, while also maintaining long conversations with Jorge Luis Borges at the National Library.

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In some way, these stories survived too.