Аргентиналық журналист және суретші Ге́ктор О́стерхельд

Argentine journalist and novelist

Héctor Germán Oesterheld ('/ɒ//s//t//ər//h//ɛ//l//d/), also known as his common abbreviation HGO (born July 23, 1919; disappeared and presumed dead 1977), was an Argentine journalist, comics editor and writer of graphic novels and comics. He is widely celebrated as a master in his field and as one of the pioneering artists in Argentine modern comics. Through his comics, Oesterheld criticized the numerous military dictatorships that beleaguered the country in different periods ranging from 1955 to 1983, as well as different facets of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, choosing a subtle criticism in his early comics during the 1950s and early 1960s, and a stronger and direct approach in his later work, after the execution of Che Guevara in 1967, and onwards from then on: in 1968 he wrote a biographical comic book of Che Guevara, which was subsequently banned and destroyed — later republished (and for the first time in complete form) in 2008 — by the ruling military dictatorship self styled as "Argentine Revolution" (1966—1973). Shortly before the start of Argentina's last military dictatorship (1976—1983), Oesterheld and his daughters had joined the Montoneros, a leftist (and former peronist) guerrilla group that immediately opposed the military junta. HGO continued to publish works in clandestine form while hidden in secret locations, but he was ultimately kidnapped and disappeared in 1977. His daughters were also arrested and disappeared, as were his sons in law. Only HGO's wife, Elsa Sánchez de Oesterheld, escaped the family's tragic fate. After democracy returned to the country, and over the years, Oesterheld's legacy has become vast, influencing several generations of new artists, particularly in the fields of literature and comic books.

Oesterheld was born on July 23, 1919 in Buenos Aires to a German father and a Spanish Basque mother. His early studies were in geology, which has been said to contribute to his acuity as a science fiction writer. He began his journalistic career in the early 1940s. His first work appeared in the daily La Prensa newspaper and then was published by Codex. Argentine journalist Jacobo Timmerman, in his memoir of his own captivity, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number (1981), recalls seeing Oesterheld in 1977 across the hall in a prison. In a report to the Argentine National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, which published its findings in 1984 entitled Nunca Más, Eduardo Arias recalls seeing Oesterheld between November 1977 and January 1978. He said the man was in terrible physical condition and at the secret detention center El Vesubio, which prisoners had sardonically named "the Sheraton".

Oesterheld worked with artists including Hugo Pratt, Alberto Breccia, Francisco Solano López, Ivo Pavone, Dino Battaglia, as well as Horacio Altuna, José Massaroli, Eugenio Zoppi, Paul Campani, Gustavo Trigo, Julio Schiaffino and others.