Sgt. Kirk #4, October 1967
What you are seeing above is the table of contents of Sgt. Kirk magazine #4. On it, "Sgt. Kirk" is by Hugo Pratt, "Randall" is by Arturo del Castillo and "Ernie Pike" is by Hugo Pratt also. Héctor Germán Oesterheld's name is nowhere to be seen as you can also confirm below.
Sgt. Kirk #4, October 1967
Hora Cero #3, July 1957
We all know this, there's no need to beat the dead horse. What is new to me is that almost sixty years later there are Italians like Claudio de Nisco here whitewashing the situation on behalf of the sacred cow. Here's what he wrote all over the Sgt. Kirk issues at the GCD: "Héctor Germán Oesterheld (credited as Hector. G. Oesterheld)." I corrected the situation until issue #30, but, since that's as far as I can go and not wanting to be like him, consider yourselves warned, dear readers!
PS A last comment: in this very issue Carlo della Corte "presents" Ernie Pike. Not once is Héctor Germán Oesterheld mentioned, obviously. With infinite cynicism he even says that the face of Ernie Pike is the face of a friend of Hugo Pratt. A friend, who, according to him, got involuntarily involved in Pratt's saga!
11 comments:
I don’t own the issue you linked but I have some of the following and Oesterheld was indeed credited as an author, even if in a schizophrenic way, so to speak: sometimes he was, sometimes not.
As you probably know, in the long interview with Dominique Petitfaux Pratt said that he wasn’t the one who omitted HGO’s due credit. But curiously in a self-presentation in Sgt. Kirk #6 he said the “Oesterheld Brothers” were publishers, not writers.
On the other hand, presenting Alberto Breccia’s (and HGO’s) Sherlock Time in the first issue of the short-lived magazine Asso di Picche (January 1969, also published by Ivaldi) he mentioned Oesterheld among other authors, not distinguishing between writers and drawers.
If you give me your email I could send you references.
Regarding your considerations about Pratt being inspired by HGO’s storytelling, I can’t see many analogies. Maybe there would have been no Wheeling without a Ticonderoga Flint, but the way Pratt wrote was quite different, at least as far as I can see from the comics by HGO I read.
Pratt’s main characters were often kids, at least in his first “solo” works (Ann y Dan, Wheeling; in A Salted Sea Ballad Corto Maltese is just a feature of the story: the protagonists are Pandora and Cain) while in Oesterheld’s series they were much rarer.
Oesterheld usually created a “collective hero” with more than one main character (Sgt. Kirk, El Eternauta, Amapola Negra, Bull Rockett, Brigada Madeleine…) while Pratt preferred the solitary hero.
Pratt was ironic, sometimes sarcastic, and he often used jokes or puns while the tone of HGO was almost always dramatic – except for that series drawn by Solano Lopez (I can’t recall the title) in which the main character was a guy who could do almost anything thanks to the many diplomas he got by mail.
The plots of HGO were very precise (or at least they appear to be) while Pratt wrote on the whim of the moment without knowing how a story would end.
Pratt had a somewhat open approach to supernatural, while Oesterheld explained everything in a rational way: there are memorable examples in Roland el Corsario, Patria Vieja and obviously Sherlock Time.
Ok, this list can be easily confuted (Argon el Justiciero and the westerns with Del Castillo were more stereotypical) and as I said I don’t know the whole production of Oesterheld, but this is the way I see it.
Hi Luca, thanks for your comments!
I don't disagree with most of your views, to tell you the truth. The differences you mention between Oesterheld and Pratt as writers do exist and I would add the treatment of Pratt's female characters. Oesterheld's world was quite misogynous in a way most of the old adventure comic strip and comic book writers was. Not in a "silent film" melodrama kind of way, but because they were almost absent from his scripts. Oesterheld's influence on Pratt goes deeper. You just need to compare "Asso di Picche" with "Corto Maltese" to see the gap. Oesterheld revolutionized comics and Hugo Pratt, who drew said revolution, absorbed everything, sometimes plagiarizing (the execution of Slütter in The Ballad of the Salty Sea comes directly from "El Fusilamiento" (execution by firing squad) by Jorge Oesterheld or "El centinela" (the watcher) by Héctor; the treasure hidden in the cannons in "So Much for Gentlemen of Fortune" comes directly from "Sgt. Kirk" in Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal, for instance), sometimes just understanding, that, in order to go beyond the adventure melodrama stereotypes, he needed to be better at characterization. His first attempts like "Ann y Dan" are awful, by the way...
In order to revert what is in the CGD I looked closely at how many times Oesterheld's name is cited in the first 30 issues of Sgt. Kirk (the last 30 I have never seen). I let them there, of course. You may count those yourself, if you are curious. What it looks like to me is that someone forgot to erase it.
As for Pratt not being responsible for Oesterheld's lack of credit in the Ivaldi publications, I don't believe that for one second. When the Oesterheld brothers were in financial difficulties they sold some of Oesterheld and Pratt stories (in Chili, methinks) without giving him any royalties. He was furious, after that, and maybe he decided revenge was in order. In Oesterheld’s last interview before his disappearance, he said to Guillermo Saccomanno and Carlos Trillo that he needed to come to Europe in order to regain some of his characters. He never did, of course…
I own the references you mention, thanks!...
Oh, and Jesuit Joe is Lobo Conrad.
Your remark about the differences in women’s depictions is very interesting, but as you said HGO was conditioned by the time he lived and worked.
I don’t find Ann y Dan that awful, it is a funny story with many references to Pratt’s early interests (the Africa of his youth, Tim Tyler’s Luck, Milton Caniff…). Moreover, it should suit the needs to seduce his future wife Anne Frognier! ;)
It is ascertained that Pratt swiped from many sources, the first panel of the Ballad with Corto’s “crucifixion” was taken from a movie. When confronted by a fan with the evidence that he traced the figure of a zulu warrior with his peculiar shield in Ann y Dan (probably from Lyman Young, but I am not sure) he said he had photographic memory and so he could recreate any images he saw without any reference!
But HGO was “inspired” by other authors, too: you probably remember the Ernie Pike story in which a soldier is captured by natives and to escape torture he says he wears a talisman that makes him immortal. To prove it they shoot him and he dies escaping torture. That was a Jack London’s story. But I guess it is impossible to work in a mass market without contracting some “debts” with other authors, and Pratt contracted many more.
I didn’t know the back story you mention about the royalties for Pratt’s work. Under this light, some things Pratt did make more sense.
Sure, no one creates in a vacuum. I said so myself here. Oesterheld's innovation and the huge dept the field of comics owes him (I see no comics historian aknowledging this, mainly because Argentinian comics are virtually invisible in the three markets) is precisely the fact that he brought a more complex approach to the lowly, childish, medium. Two crucial points in his writing are a huge advance: he avoided manichaeism and, as I said before, paid great care to characterization.
As I said before, I have never seen issues #30-60 of Sgt. Kirk magazine, but looking on ebay.it I found the table of contents of #31 and it was a huge surprise to me, but I'm doing a post about it.
Here in Italy Oesterheld is held in high regard, for the reasons you mention (obviously, by those readers who knows him and are not addicted to mangas or superheroes).
Some years ago Lo Scarabeo published "Donde esta' Oesterheld", a collection of essays about his works and life.
I own the Scarabeo book and I'm sure those misunderstandings of old are far behind us now. Unfortunately there are still some people who revel in the old ways. The only explanation I can find is that comic fans tend to value draftsmen (they're usually men) over writers. Maybe the nationality plays a role, too... I'm not sure if Oesterheld is valued in Argentina for the, according to yours truly, of course, right reasons, either... People over there tend to value "El Eternauta" over everything else, but, to me, his true masterpieces are "Ernie Pike" (not in a bulk, mind) and "Amapola Negra."
Yes, as far as I know in Argentina El Eternauta is the masterpiece of HGO "par excellence". But I know Argentinian people who praise other works of him more, notably El Sargento Kirk. But they are at the very least 50 years old now (José Munoz among them).
I agree Ernie Pike was one of his best exploit but Amapola Negra was cut off before its natural conclusion, or is it just my impression?
Nope, "Amapola Negra" reached its natural ending with the main characters' death. As Oesterheld put it answering Guillermo Saccomanno:
"Why do you always kill them all?
Because of that character no one really takes advantage of, which is death."
Ah, ok, I remember that in the first episodes there was a determined number of missions they were assigned to, but in the end they achieved many less. This made me guess the series was cancelled before its natural end.
They would be discharged after their 25º mission, but they died during their 12º mission.
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