Evita

Evita Synopsis

Published in 1970, Evita: The Life and Work of Eva Perón was daringly intended to be the follow-up to the artists' successful and controversial 1969 graphic biography Life of Che. Hector Germán Oesterheld plotted the book and the father and son team of Alberto and Enrique Breccia drew the comic - but journalist Luis Alberto Murray sanitized the text. In 2001, comics publisher Javier Doeyo discovered Oesterheld's original script (long after the writer's presumed death at the hand of a military government) and published a restored and revised version; it is translated in English here for the first time.

Beginning with the people rejoicing when Perón's body was finally laid to rest in Recoleta Cemetery in 1976, this graphic biography then turns to flashbacks as readers learn about her childhood, born in extreme poverty. Still a teen, Eva Duarte went to Buenos Aires and became an actress: especially active on the radio.

While fundraising for local relief efforts, she met Colonel Perón and the two became entwined personally, professionally, and politically. They were married by the time he had been imprisoned, freed due to union organization of mass protests, and elected president in 1946. As First Lady, nicknamed Evita, she devoted herself to a foundation for social services, campaigning for women's right to vote, and representing Argentina abroad.

Society hated her: she was popular with the poor and dubbed "The Spiritual Leader of the Nation." In his afterword, Argentine scholar Pablo Turnes explains how this graphic biography mirrors Perónism: "Perónism has not survived 76 years in spite of its contradictions; its contradictions are what has allowed it to reinvent itself every time it was needed."