Ernie Pike
[1957]
H.G. Oesterheld
[SCRIPT]
Hugo Pratt
[DRAWINGS]
Another of the celebrated collaborations between these two universal masters of the genre. A masterful war comic book with pacifist undertones, which set out to tell the story of World War II through the eyes of its anonymous protagonists..
Los relatos de Ernie Pike Ernie Pike's stories are chronicles of World War II, focusing not on the great events of the war but on its anonymous protagonists: soldiers and civilians who are confronted with horror, dehumanization, and bewilderment, as much as solidarity and heroism.It centers on tragic events involving soldiers of both sides. Generally, those tragedies are misunderstandings that end up badly: characters who go mad, who kill their own friends by mistake or because they believe them to be traitors, who attempt to get killed in a specific way to avoid a more gruesome death, or who must mercy-kill badly hurt comrades, to cite several examples. The characterto whom Pratt gave Oesterheld's own features - is inspired by Ernest Pyle, mythical American war correspondent, who lost his life in the battle of Okinawa, in 1945. Ernie Pike was first published in 1957 in Hora Cero magazine, published by Frontera. After Hugo Pratt's return to Europe, the comic continued to be published until the 1970s with cartoonists of the stature of Alberto Breccia, Julio Schiaffino and Francisco Solano López, among others.
I know very well that Life or Time or any other magazine worth its salt will not buy this story. It is perhaps a bitter story, though, I think, with something good in heroism... ,a story with that much gray that real stories have. A story with no good guys and no bad guys. But with a real villain. A supervillain. The most hated of all: war!"
Translations:
Italy, France, Argentina, Spain
Adaptations:
Rights available
Bio
[H.G. Oesterheld]
[Hugo Pratt]
-
Héctor Germán Oesterheld
[Script]
Héctor Germán Oesterheld was born in Buenos Aires on July 23, 1919. Unanimously considered the most iconic author of Argentine comics and a global reference of the genre, he created more than 60 works throughout his career. Before establishing himself as a comic book author, he was editor of science fiction literature in the magazine Más Allá, and later, in Géminis. He published in the magazines Misterix, Hora Cero and Frontera, among many others. His best known characters are Sergeant Kirk, Ernie Pike, Sherlock Time and Mort Cinder, but it is undoubtedly The Eternauta the creation that gives him a place among the masters of comics. Towards the end of the 70's, in parallel with his social and political commitment, his works became more and more committed and openly critical of the military regimes of the time. After the 1976 coup d'état, Oesterheld went underground, where he continued writing scripts, among them the sequel to El Eternauta. On April 27, 1977, he was kidnapped by the "task forces" and has been missing ever since. In Argentina, the Day of the Comic Strip is celebrated on September 4, in commemoration of the first edition of Hora Cero magazine, in 1957.
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Hugo Pratt
[Drawings]
Ugo Eugenio Prat was born in Rimini, Italy, in 1927. At a very young age, together with other great Italian cartoonists such as Alberto Ongaro, Dino Battaglia and Mario Faustinelli, he created the magazine Asso di Picche (Ace of Pique).
The situation in post-war Italy prompted Pratt and several of his colleagues to settle in Argentina in 1949, where the comics scene was going through a moment of great expansion, both artistically and economically
There, in the editorial office of the Abril publishing house, he met Héctor G. Oesterheld, with whom he would create works that would make him famous as a cartoonist: Ernie Pike, Sergeant Kirk and Ticonderoga.
In the 1960s, he returned to Europe where he later became a full-fledged author and began publishing the Corto Maltese stories, one of the most celebrated characters of the universal comic strip
A hugely influential creator, global comic icon and adventurous character, Pratt died in Switzerland in 1995.