El Eternauta: tercera parte

El Eternauta: tercera parte
Cover of the book by Ediciones Record
Author(s)	Alberto Ongaro
Illustrator(s)	Oswal
Current status/schedule	Concluded
Launch date	1981
Publisher(s)	Ediciones Record
Genre(s)	Science fiction
Original language	Spanish
Preceded by	El Eternauta: segunda parte

El Eternauta: tercera parte is the second sequel of the Argentine comic The Eternaut, created by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and drawn by Francisco Solano López in 1957. The first sequel, El Eternauta: segunda parte, had been published a few years before it, and Oesterheld was subjected to an enforced disappearance shortly afterwards. El Eternauta: tercera parte, published in 1981, is the first comic about the character that is not written by Oesterheld, and Solano López refused any involvement with it. It was written instead by Alberto Ongaro, with illustrations by Oswal, Mario Morhain, and Carlos Meglia.

Plot

Juan Salvo and Germán have returned to the present, but Salvo still mourns his late wife and child, Elena and Martita. With his powers he can summon images of unknown places, and he discovers that they are alive somewhere. It turns out to be a dimensional portal, opened by the atomic explosions, so Salvo and Germán cross it. Elena and Martita turn out to be duplicates in a mirror universe, along with their own Juan Salvo and Germán. All the people of the neighborhood in the mirror universe are abducted by an army of robots. Salvo and Germán find out that there was an invasion by the "condors", a ship from a thousand years in the future that accidentally crossed the portal and ended up in the 1980s. They meet their leader, Prince Condor, and escape: Condor does not want to return to the future, but to use the 1980s as a hideout in his war against the authorities of his time, and for that he needs to know the location of the portal. During their escape they find the other Salvo and Germán, who escaped from captivity and started a resistance. When they find themselves cornered, the duplicate Salvo and Germán attack the Condors, who kill them.

Now confident they are not being followed, Salvo and Germán use the portal to go to the future. They meet Germán O., a descendant of Germán, and member of the ruling council. They find out that one of the "Hands" from the first invasion was displaced to the future by the portal, was styling himself "the great magician", and had raised an army to conquer Earth. Cóndor and Alma, two kids that he brainwashed and subjected to genetic experimentation, were the leaders of that army. When they fell into the past by the portal nobody realized what had happened, neither the government nor the Hand, who thought that his "children" were dead. Salvo steals from him a device that would kill them instantly, installed as a security measure, and killed the Hand. Back in the 1980s they kill Condor and Alma and blow up the spaceship.

Editorial history

The Eternaut was a comic strip written between 1957 and 1959 by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Francisco Solano López. They made a sequel, El Eternauta: segunda parte between 1976 and 1978. By that time, Oesterheld had joined the Montoneros and used the comic to promote left-wing propaganda against the military junta. He, therefore, was subjected to an enforced disappearance during the National Reorganization Process. Since the comic was still popular in Europe, it was soon followed by a third part. Editors Alfredo Scutti from Ediciones Record (Argentina) and Alvaro Zerboni from Eura Editoriale (Italy) negotiated the terms. The new series would be published first in Italy, in the comic L'Eternauta, and then in the Argentine Skorpio.

The story had no credited authors, although it was written by Alberto Ongaro, with illustrations by Oswal, Mario Morhain, and Carlos Meglia. Oesterheld's self-insert character, Germán, who had been introduced at the end of part one of El Eternauta, was retained as a viewpoint character in the 1975 story. Solano López received proposals to drew the new comic, but refused to do so because of the tragic circumstances of the sequel, which was still close in time. As Ediciones Record insisted, he only drew some faces for future reference, and asked that the credits do not mention him. He drew the faces of the first thirty pages, based on Oswal's drafts. Morhain took over the art after the comic's editors "had squeezed all the juice they could out of his faces", according to Solano López. The resulting comic, he added, was "impersonal, cold".