Our Eternaut, a time traveler who materializes one night in Argentina with a warning of the coming future, is to my mind more like Ishmael – he is not the hero of his own story, but a witness to dozens of other stories. Robinson Crusoe is a hero in the classical sense, a man who builds up his world through rugged individualism (and the grace of god). The Eternaut begins with a testimony, and for all that the book evokes Robinson Crusoe in its narration (writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld was quite the fan) I couldn’t help but think about Moby Dick.
You don’t even need to crack the book (or pull it out of the fancy slipcase) to feel it, just look at the face of our protagonist, behind that improvised mask that make him appear like a diver (the sea is a recurring motif), and understand – this book is zeitgeist!
That being said? The Eternaut sure feels like the single most relevant work of fiction one can find right now. Its greatness is informed by our times, but is not limited to them. There has be something of the sublime about the work to make it survive: Berlin would still be great even if ended up lost and banished to the sun and everybody. It's not to say that comic books aren’t political, only that this shouldn’t be all that they are. But to do so would ignore all the other good stuff – the way he writes characters, the way he pencils the city (even as it crumbles) in such a loving manner, the way he makes all the small moments stand up both in their own and as a part of such a large tapestry. For example, it’s tempting to rate Jason Lutes’ Berlin highly because the series was completed when the particular zeitgeist was to talk about fall of old global empires and the rise of modern fascism.
It’s wrong to limit our understanding (and appreciation) of a story in relation only to the modern socio-political context by which we read it. Héctor Oesterheld & Francisco Solano Lopez
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