Mort Cinder

Mort Cinder is an Argentine comic strip with a script by Hector Germán Oesterheld and drawings by Alberto Breccia, from 1962 to 1964. Not very successful at the time, over time it was rediscovered and evaluated more exhaustively, and is currently considered a cult work.

Editorial history

The previously made series debuted on June 20, 1962, in the prologue story Ezra Winston, the Antiquarian, which revolves around the character Ezra Winston. The first issue appeared on July 20, 1962, in issue number 718 of the magazine Místerix. The character of Mort Cinder appeared for the first time on August 17, 1962, in No. 718 of the Argentine magazine Misterix. The Mort Cinder series ended in Misterix #798 on February 28, 1964, becoming a classic.

In Spain, the work began to be known in 1969, with the distribution of some copies of the comics magazine LD (Drawn Literature).

Synopsis

The story is told by a London antiques dealer, named Ezra, who fate leads to meet Mort Cinder, the eternal man. This has been perpetuated over time by dying and resurrecting, so it has been present in many significant moments in the History of Humanity: the construction of the Tower of Babel, the battle of Thermopylae or the First World War. The work is structured in short comics in which Mort relates his adventures to Ezra Winston, the antique dealer, based on objects that he finds in his shop. In Oesterheld's own words:

The adventures of Mort Cinder are always started with an object that appears in the Ezra shop, the antiquarian. I have always been fascinated by old objects, not by their aesthetics, but by the stories they enclose; every object is permeated with past life. I am attracted to memories, even if they are not mine or anyone. Mort Cinder is death that doesn't end up being death. A hero who dies and rises.

These stories, despite their inclusion in a fantastic story, are faithful to the known facts, thus giving them greater strength. Oscar Masotta, the great Argentine philosopher, rambles about the protagonist, comparing him with two other great comic strip classics (The Spirit and The Phantom):

Because in truth Mort Cinder, the “man of the thousand and a death” is an interesting investment of the scheme that governs the character of Lee Falk, the ‘walking ghost’, the only comic hero who dies... (in The Phantom the character does not die, only the men who wear the costume die; in Mort Cinder the man is immortal, only their multiple historical incarnations die.)

The character of Mort Cinder also has some points in common with Juan Salvo from "The Eternaluta", he is an action character with a friend-helper-squire of great technical and cultural abilities, Ezra, in this case, Favalli in the eternaluta and the theme of being able to move through time. Mort Cinder, like the phoenix, is reborn from the ashes so to speak and comes to life age after age. When it comes to being, Mort Cinder is just another poor man, one of many, without a present, one of many. Someone whom time defeats not once, but several times. And by uniting concepts, he has a lot in common with the character in the novel 'El Vagabundo de las Estrellas'. by Jack London. Like him in a previous life he has been imprisoned and has received torture. When it comes to being someone, Mort Cinder, contrary to what one might think, is not eternal but infinite. He can go through his past lives: Only the flesh dies, the spirit endures and continues to build on itself through infinite and successive incarnations in his eternal reincarnation. The slow experience of living that inevitably leads us to death, and the fears that are generated in the process, are not important to him. Independence from death produces a learning to live.

The characters move freely throughout the work. They come together in Mort Cinder within the same unity, the meaning and coherence that implies both his death and his own resurrection. A hero that no one would call a hero, he is a hero without being one, Mort Cinder, is presented as a murderer, also here he coincides with the character in Jack London's novel. But from these common points, Oesterheld develops his own philosophy, which appears in & # 34; El Eternauta & # 34; and in numerous of his literary stories: the errors, the fears, the persecution, the attempt to dominate human freedom by the powerful, in short the ideas that made the repressors notice him and make him disappear. In “The Lead Eyes” we find the forces that try to dominate us and resort to any means to achieve it. mind control, overriding personality, bribery...

The work is somewhat uneven, since although it is very creative and shows great intelligence and originality in its approaches, it was done very hastily both in the scripts, whose narrative thread sometimes does not pass well from some stories to others, such as in the drawing, in the process of transferring it to ink, examples of the speed with which the work was done have remained. However, despite this urgency, the consistent and meticulous chiaroscuro drawing that Breccia uses, with strong contrasts between volumes, some illuminated and others shadowed, more effectively highlights the strong points of the story. The great intellectual level of the script, born from Oesterheld's extraordinary talent as a writer and his deep knowledge of history, geography and other subjects of human knowledge, make the work very different and much more mature than others of the time, having more in common with current graphic novels or with literature for adult audiences than with comics for young people of that time.

Just as Ernie Pike's face is inspired by Osterheld, Alberto Breccia drew the antiques dealer in this series with his own face, while Mort Cinder is his assistant Horacio Lalia.

Chapters

1. Ezra Winston, the antiquarian. Prologue (unitary history created before the development of the character of Mort Cinder, and with Ezra Winston as the protagonist. From the "Land Eyes Swap" Ezra is established as a secondary character and Mort Cinder as the protagonist.
2. Lead eyes
3. Charlie's mother
4. The tower of Babel
5. In prison: Marlin
6. In prison: El Frate
7. Sacrifice to the Moon (The Glass)
8. The Slave Goth
9. The tomb of Lisis
10. The Battle of the Thermos of the Rosal Victory

The Battle of Thermopylae

This episode is by far one of the best of Mort Cinder, and the most famous worldwide, being usually highlighted (as one of the best episodes or the best of the Mort Cinder episodes).) by critics and specialized comics publications. From an amphora that the antiquarian Ezra Winston buys, Mort makes an observation: "The Greeks never dramatized so much (...) but I was there, at Thermopylae." Mort begins to narrate the event by recounting the warning that a Spartan explorer gives to the king of Sparta, Leonidas I, leader of the 300 Spartans who, together with more than three thousand Greek allies, wait in the gorge for the passage of the emperor's great army. Persian Xerxes I, to at least resist and maintain honor. The explorer warns that the enemy army is enormous, so much so that the arrows of all the Persian archers will block the sun. Then Dienekes (Mort Cinder) responds: "Better, we will fight in the shade!", receiving a compliment from Leonidas, and a disapproval from his best friend Alpheus, since he is skeptical about the possibilities of the Greeks.

The fight finally took place three days later; The Persians number thousands, it seems like millions, but the narrowness of the gorge forces them to attack in just a few, while the combat superiority of the Spartan hoplites ends up decimating their ranks. The Persians are practically committing suicide. The combat quickly ends, although with a surprise: an alternative step has been discovered that leads to the "unattainable" Greek rearguard. The Facian allies prepare to control the passage.

Hours later, the ten thousand "immortals" attack, the warrior elite of Xerxes, who begins to get impatient and sends the best warriors he has; without better results. Dienekes' great confidence is tested when he is wounded and Alpheus nearly dies. That same night, in the middle of the calm, the augur Megistías predicts to Dienekes that the end is not far away. The Spartan does not want to believe it, he denies it; If the Greeks slaughter the Persians so easily, how can they succumb...?

The second day is like the first: the Spartans win. But at night Leonidas is informed that the Facians have succumbed, and that in the morning Thermopylae will be taken. The Spartan king does not hesitate to decide: 'All allies are free to leave if they want. We Spartans promised to defend the gorge, and we will do so. Everyone abandons the cause, except the Thespians and the Spartans, adding only a thousand men, against the 250 thousand Persians...

Last day. Leonidas decides to lead his hoplites into combat, without waiting for the clash. "We would die killing." The final resistance is fierce, the Greeks seem to be drunk with blood. Finally, something inevitable happens: an arrow pierces Leonidas's throat, breaking his marrow and taking his life. The Persians try to steal the king's body, but his troops defend it. With no leader left, the Greeks are cornered on both fronts, and Mort painfully narrates how he lost his companions, watching them die... until he was taken prisoner.

Xerxes himself announces that he will mutilate him as torture and punishment before killing him. However, before the end, Dienekes instigates him to give the order once and for all... Xerxes asks him, amazed at his courage: "What kind of man are you, Spartan?". He answers: " "You said it yourself, a Spartan." Xerxes meditates for a moment, tired, no longer strong, no longer hungry for battle, and frees the Greek. "Go away, Spartan... go away. You are more king than I: you are king of yourself. Go away."

Importance

In this work we can see a clear evolution towards expressionism in the art of Alberto Breccia. In Oesterheld's own words:

In Mort Cinder there is anguish, there is torture. He responded perhaps to a particular moment of mine, but much of that climate was determined by Breccia, much more "tortured" than me. Breccia's drawing has a fourth dimension of suggestion that separates him from the other drawings I know: this inaccurate suggestion values him and raises ideas in the scriptwriter.

It is possible that this evolution was motivated in part by the anger provoked by the words that his friend Hugo Pratt blurted out to him one night: You are a cheap whore, because you are doing shit when you could do something better.