Manuel García Iglesias makes eternity a very personal comic, which tells an incredible story in the Second World War, which mixes the horror of the war with the harmony of Melómanos

In this comic, the classical music become a evocative and deeply symbolic element which transcends time and circumstances. Although the story develops in the gloomy context of the Second World Warwhere the pilots of the axis -a German lieutenant and soldiers of the blue division -with their war horses, Destruction and sufferingthere is a Poetic and almost mystical shift In the fiction.

The work of Manuel García Iglesias, EternityPublished by Cartem Comics It is based on a The story of Ricardo Menéndez SalmonPublished in Blue horses (2005)who obtained the Critics Astuias Award and the Juan Rulfo International Tales; Where the importance is shared between the two species, horses and humans, integrated into the German army.

The plot

From an interview in Callao Square in MadridThe author presents a narrated story Of One of the veterans of the blue division campaignfield previously explored in other titles of editorialLike Blue Hell; In the old Soviet Unionwhich was in Hypomobile company Under the command of Lieutenant Baumann.

“In his office (…) in the middle of that madness, the Hipomóvil company of the blue division”- Manuel-

At night Thirteen horsesthe supports of these cyclists, They move away of his cruel tasks to face a special place where Classical music It resonates in the air. These horses, apparently unaware of the surrounding conflict, become Faithful music listenersAs if, in some way, the harmony of the compositions could redeem them or, at least, to offer them a breath of the brutality of their existence.

Eternity a very personal job

Music It is presented by Manuel A. García Iglesias Like an escapea form of beauty This allows them to connect with something beyond war and suffering. Through this powerful metaphor, the comic invites reflect on the contrast between the sublime and the destructiveShowing how, even in the darkest moments, a little light and hope can losses, evoking a profound connection with humanity, even in those that are marked by the war.

In this work, the Manuel García Iglesias prove one Impressive mastery When playing with the Visual contrast To intensify the emotions it transmits Every scene. Throughout the comic, USA different artistic techniques This not only enriches the narrative, but also strengthens the problems of history.

In the scenes that represent the badThe author opts for dark tones and intense shadowsWhile the character factions are blurred, creating a disturbing and oppressive atmosphere. The lack of clear details right now reflects the chaos and inhumanization that the bad guys represent.

On the contrary, when the story is concentrated on the goodness, The illustrations are full of lightWith a light color palette that generates a feeling of hope. The characters are outlined with more defined blows, giving a sense of clarity and humanity that highlights the purity and nobility of their actions.

This Visual distinction Not only does The story is richer in shadesbut also guides the reader through the Emotional of work, allowing him to experiment more viscerally the struggles between good and evil, in this Fight that prevails in Lieutenant BaumannAs the author cites in the introduction, between his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Edition

Eternity maintains the quality standards that are distinguished for the publisher Cartem Comics In his publications, this time the work, published in the series Echoes of inkis linked to axiswith measures of 21 × 29 centimetersIn color and a length of 100 pages.

In conclusion, we are facing a true work of artwhich will visually delight the most demanding and their narrative is reflected in an excellent way with their design. This is a Surprising comicunusual, but Very attractive precisely for its divergence of the main current of the vehicle.

Eternity is a comic book based on the homonymous report of the salmon of Ricardo Menéndez, published in 2005 in the volume The Blue Horses, edited by Trea and awarded the Astuias Critics prize and with the Juan Rulfo International Story Award.

The reflection on which eternity is vertebra constitutes a commonplace of the twentieth century imagination, a question of paradoxical root which can be enunciated as follows:

How is it possible that Germany, a country that prohibits the most fertile manifestations of culture and the human spirit – between them, instead, music – at the same time inspired the great jokes of the time and its deepest shame, with National Socialism as an ideological flag?

The attempt to satisfy this question is organized through a story in which beauty and horror tend their hand in one of the scenarios for the Antonomasia of the Second World War: the German-Soviet competition.

This antinomy is articulated around a peculiar image: that of thirteen horses that listen to Schubert in Russian winter, in the interpretation of a Nazi military orchestra dedicated to Stalingrad’s Titanomaquy.

In fact, the prominence of eternity is shared by men and animals, in particular by a hypomobile society under the command of a melómano and a cruel officer, who integrates the two faces of the human condition in his personality, the eternal conflict between Jekyll and Hyde.

The symbolic power of the horse has been connected here with historical resonances that have become symbols of evil, encrypted in the existence in the same society of such calm called with the most abject characteristics of dementia, in the coexistence of the manager of death and the manager of beauty in a symbiosis that reaches its canonical expression in the concentration camps, as villages that are reflected in Deutges and that in the character of eight dietrich Zur Linde.

Therefore, in the same way that the horse does not support in eternity the simple label of animality, its rude conception as a simple load or transport beast, the man capable of interpreting a exquisite quartet of ropes in the middle of the most cruel of the landscapes is devoid (or disapproved) of humanity.

Eternity tries to show, through the synthesis of text and image, a communion between men and horses pressed by the tragic condition of existence. If men learned to convert the fatality of time into an architecture of music and rhythm, the horses have discovered that the fodder of the time is better converted to beauty.

Of course, this osmosis between humanity and animality through culture is too dense to last, it is too exposed to its urgent abolition. The accident that closes the comic, the ice tomb that closes on the protagonists of eternity is nothing more than the museum of the living history, the white text, the empty image, which everyone denies and erases the same way.