Mort Cinder
[1962]
H.G. Oesterheld
[SCRIPT]
Alberto Breccia
[DRAWINGS]
A cult work that had a powerful influence on many Argentinean and foreign comic book authors. It narrates the adventures and misadventures of a time traveler who drags the anguish of his immortality through scenarios such as the Tower of Babel and the Battle of Thermopylae.
London antique dealer Ezra Winston crosses paths with Mort Cinder, an immortal character who over the centuries has witnessed many of the fundamental episodes of human history. In each episode, Mort Cinder shares with Ezra his memories, triggered by some object in the antiquarian's store. The erudition of the script, the philosophical complexity of the plot and the powerful expressionism of the images marked a revolution for the comics of the time, also anticipating conceptual innovations such as the hero troubled by his own powers, which would be central to the comic universe of the following decades.
“Una pieza fundamental del genoma del cómic global, dura y espeluznante – un eslabón perdido del arte del cómic, que une paÃses, épocas e idiomas – Mort Cinder se siente hoy en dÃa de una inventiva innovadora y vertiginosa. En 1962, debió de parecer como si hubiera caÃdo de una maldita nave espacial”.
The Mort Cinder stories are tenebrous parables written with great intelligence by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and evocatively illustrated by Alberto Breccia, who uses strokes that seem to be placed with both careful precision and fervent instinct.
Translations:
Croacia, Finlandia, Francia, Alemania, Brasil, Rusia, Estados Unidos.
Adaptations:
Rights available
Bio
[H.G. Oesterheld]
[Alberto Breccia]
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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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Alberto Breccia
[Drawings]
Born in Montevideo in 1919 and raised in Argentina since he was three years old, Breccia is known as "El Tripero", since his first job was in a slaughterhouse, skinning cows.
Naturally gifted for drawing, he began his career in the 40's, with a classicist stroke influenced by Milton Caniff. In the following decade, both Hugo Pratt and Oesterheld encouraged him to liberate his artistic identity, influenced by expressionism and the masters of German and Soviet cinema.
His collaboration with Oesterheld gave birth to masterpieces of the genre, such as Mort Cinder, Sherlock Time and the reversion of El Eternauta, as well as the biographies of Che Guevara and Eva Perón.
A great master of chiaroscuro, he adapted stories by his admired H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, and worked with scriptwriters such as Guillermo Saccomano, Carlos Trillo and Juan Sasturain, with whom he created celebrated comics such as El aire, Un tal Daneri and Perramus, respectively.
He died in Buenos Aires in 1993.