El Eternauta: Segunda Parte is the sequel to El Eternauta, by Héctor Germán Oesteheld and Solano López.
The first story ended with a Stable Time Loop, with Juan Salvo back at home years before the alien invasion. Unable to cope with everything he had heard, Oesterheld (from then on, just "Germán") go to his house to try to get some answers. They are all time-displaced, house and all, into the far distant future. Many years after the invasion. Salvo's friends are all gone, as they died during the invasion, but German is now there as well.
The city is completely gone, and nature has reclaimed the land once again. There are some few human survivors, but they live in basically the stone age. The "Ellos" are still there, in a giant fort built where the commercial center of Buenos Aires once existed. Juan Salvo, who became a "mutant" with superpowers as a result of his voyages through time, organizes a resistance and heads to the fort with some others. They manage to defeat the aliens for good, but not without great looses.
The context of the story is a story in itself. Oesterheld had joined the Montoneros, a terrorist organization that sought to establish a communist dictatorship in Argentina akin to Castro's Cuba, and which was violently opposed by the National Reorganization Process military junta. So he became clandestine and lived on the run... and still managed to write the scripts for the comic, instructing Solano Lopez the details by phone. At one point he was captured by the military and executed in secrecy. Circumstances do not allow to know the precise date, so although the story was completed it is unknown if he really finished it or if someone else (Solano Lopez or a ghostwriter) completed it, while still crediting the plot to Oesterheld.
Tropes
- The Artifact: The cover for the book that compiles the series shows Juan Salvo in his iconic protection suit, but he never uses it in this story.
- Author Avatar: Oesterheld appears again in the story (usually named just "Germán"), but taking part in the action alongside the protagonist this time.
- Call to Agriculture: Once all the war is over, Germán became a farmer.
- The Constant: All the city of Buenos Aires has been razed by the bombs, except the Monument of the Spanish
. Nobody understands why it is still standing. - David Versus Goliath: If you thought that the Gurbos are unstoppable, that's because you never saw them fight against a pack of wild dogs.
- Didn't Think This Through: Juan and German were about to leave the house and explore around, but then realized that going out in the night would be a great mistake. Better top wait until dawn and explore with daylight.
- Don't Call Me "Sir": Juan proposed Germán to drop the formal mannerisms, circumstances made him another member of the family. Germán thought that it was more than that, perhaps they were the last 4 survivors of the human race! Yes, the time for ceremonies is long past...
- Collateral Angst: Elena, Martita, Nico, Maria, and others all died defending the headland. We did not see their last stand. We only saw Juan and Germán arrive too late, because saving the caves first (where all the kids were being protected) was the priority.
- First-Episode Twist: At the end of the first episode (this was first published as a serial) Juan Salvo looks out the window. There's no snow, but something much worse. We find out what in the next episode: that the whole city is gone, that their house is somehow standing alone in the countryside.
- Happy Ending Override: The first series had a Bittersweet Ending: The invasion took place and nothing stopped or undid it, but Juan Salvo at least got to be reunited with his family for some years (before the Stable Time Loop starts the invasion again). In this sequel, even that small consolation prize is robbed from him: he's displaced, house and all, into the distant future and a new horror.
- Heroic BSoD: German had a final Mind Screw moment before finally forgetting everything about the "Eternauta". After it, he does not know where he is or how did he get there.
- Hope Sprouts Eternal: The alien invasion destroyed the human race, and in fact most life on the planet. But in the distant future, somehow, nature grew back. Some species (dogs, ants, birds) have mutated because of the bombs, but otherwise, somehow, life found a way.
- Immediate Sequel: The story starts right after the ending of the first series.
- Mind Screw: Juan Salvo is gone to his home. Germán is left alone to ponder about that story he told about the alien invasion, the cascarudos, the manos, the ellos... and sits in the chair that Salvo used while narrating all that. All the memories of it suddenly flow into him.
- Mistaken for Insane: Germán claims that he did publish the story of everything Juan told him, that it was published two times in magazines and as a book in 1976. Favalli tries to comfort him, thinking that he's crazy.
- Motor Mouth: Desperate to prove that he did not make things up, Germán throws detail after detail of the things he knows about about Juan Salvo, family and friends.
- No Ontological Inertia: Juan Salvo forgot everything about the alien invasion when he returned to the past and finally realized he was in the past. Eventually, Germán forgot all the story as well. But when they were displaced to the future, they suddenly remembered it all.
- Our Orcs Are Different: The Zarpos, in the second part, look and behave like orcs, as they are strong, violent slaves of the Big Bad. But they have been bioenginereed from human slaves, and look more like neanderthals with claws and small tusks. And they use guns, more than axes◊.
- Perplexing Plurals: Bigua asks a captive Mano about the number of Zarpos: he boasts that they had just created several hundreds, and who can know if that's true or not? Asked about the number of "Manos", he says that they are many, that he forgot the number. And when he's asked about the number of "Ellos", he repeats the plural article in confusion, and then openly refuses to answer. It was a Five-Second Foreshadowing before it was revealed that there is a single "Ello" in the fort.
- Steampunk: A very curious and
early approach. In the Second Part, the Cave People are subjected by a Higher-Tech Species that have been stranded for centuries because of a malfunctioning spaceship and are quite bitter about it. Limited in their high tech supplies and armory, they keep the Cave People enslaved and unable to advance technologically, using an army of ferocious artificial humans and Humungous Wooden Steam-Propelled Tanks with one-shot cannons and flamethrowers. It sounds ridiculous, and one of the characters even points it out, but the "mano" quite calmly explains to him that as crude as it looks, it works just swell against unarmed cavemen. In this grim universe, rocks don't beat flamethrowers. - Talking the Monster to Death: Germán tries to do it with the Mano, to repeat the trick of Favalli, but he can't remove his Slasher Smile. It turns out that wasn't a Mano. It was an Ello, masquerading as a Mano
- Time Police: One of the Manos released an Ultimatum on the caves. He was about to leave, when he noticed several foreigners of time, and tried to burn them with his flamethrower.
