Due to popular demand, Fantagraphics has announced that the original comics inspired by the hit Netflix TV show The Eternaut will return to print. Although the publisher hasn’t stipulated a release date, Fantagraphics suggests the new printing will come later in the year, with preorders opening immediately.
The new printing of The Eternaut appears to be the same slipcase edition that received an Eisner Award in 2016, but with the added feature of the Netflix logo on the cover to guide fans of the show to pick it up. The book will retail for $49.99.
The Eternaut (El Eternauta) is widely considered a classic of world comics, with editions in multiple languages. Created by writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld and artist Francisco Solano López, the story traces a group of survivors in Buenos Aires following an alien invasion. It ran as a strip in Argentina’s weekly anthology Hora Cero between 1957 and 1959. It was so popular that the series was reinvented by the writer, alongside artist Alberto Breccia (The Eternaut 1969), and later given an official follow up with López before series co-creator and writer Oesterheld and the majority of his family were disappeared in 1977 by Argentina’s ruling military junta during the Dirty War.
The surprise popularity of the Bruno Stagnaro adaptation on Netflix may have caught the publisher flat footed as interest in the original comic surged. Many took to social media to complain that the book wasn’t physically available to buy when the Netflix adaptation debuted in April.
In Argentina, the series has also been an opportunity for NGOs to drive awareness about reuniting the children of pregnant mothers disappeared with their surviving relatives – including the possibility of finding Oesterheld’s two missing grandchildren.
While The Eternaut is coming back to print, a number of related books are still out of print at the publisher, including Alberto Breccia collaborations The Eternaut 1969 and Mort Cinder. With luck, we might see these resurface sooner than later.
“The surprise popularity of the Bruno Stagnaro adaptation on Netflix may have caught the publisher flat footed as interest in the original comic surged”
This feels like such a rookie mistake. It’s 2025 and every publisher should be aware of the interest a media adaptation brings.