Breccia, Alberto - Mort Cinder, Charlie's Mother, episode 1, page 3 (1962)
Artist: Alberto Breccia (All)
19 Comments - 446 Views - 7 Likes
Artwork Details
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Description‘Is the past as dead as we believe?’ asks Ezra Winston, an antiquarian, in the Gift of the Pharaoh, the prologue piece from August 1962 that begins Mort Cinder.Mort Cinder is an Argentinian comic series written by Hector German Oesterheld and illustrated by Alberto Breccia. It ran in the weekly Argentine comic, Misterix, from 1962 to 1964. The run featured ten stories (including the prologue story) and some of the most stunning visual effects used in graphic storytelling to its time. Alberto Breccia utilized every tool at his disposal - razors, toothbrushes, his own fingerprints, etc. while mixing glues and solvents to achieve the visual versatility required to properly display the emotionally heavy and haunted man that is Mort Cinder as he moves through time. A master of dynamic use of light & shade, his daughter would describe how he would draw in a dark room lit only by candles to better capture the play between light & shadows while drawing the series. It was a deeply personal work to him, which may be why the key character of Ezra is based on Breccia himself and Mort is Horacio Lalia, a Breccia apprentice who would later become a comic artist, himself. Who is Mort Cinder (whose first & last name translate to ‘death’ & ‘ash’)? He’s a hanged man, first referenced in a newspaper article wrapped around an otherworldly amulet that leads Ezra to Cinder’s burial site. An old man (also an antiquarian, albeit a traveling one who went to estate sales of the recently deceased and bought antiques) had brought the amulet to Ezra and then disappeared. The newspaper article leads Ezra to the unmarked burial site of Mort Cinder…and the resurrected Mort. It’s the beginning of Ezra's writing of Mort’s many deaths, resurrections, and life experiences across time after he discovers that Mort is a man who does not die, has lived for millennia and has been witness to historical events, big & small, going back to man’s earliest beginnings. In the capacity of a witness, he’s been a laborer, a slave, a ship hand, a prisoner, a soldier – he’s never in command; that’s always someone else, and the authority figures he encounters were frequently crushing & controlling. He’s a participant and a watcher, somehow tasked with capturing truth and carrying it across time. From the earliest point of their connection, Mort speaks to a ‘they’, an unidentified aggressor or authority (the ‘leaden-eyed men’ who lack compassion) that seeks to separate the now connected Ezra & Mort. As we get deeper into the story, this enigmatic authority is identified as Professor Angus, who tells Ezra ‘You will make a perfect leaden-eyed man. The men of great imagination are the easiest to hypnotize. They always turn out to be the best servants, Ezra.’ This newly revealed authority explains to Ezra that it’s all about being ‘controlled by another intelligence; it will be me thinking for you.’ Professor Angus intends to be the ‘lord and master of all.’ Interestingly, Professor Angus is defeated in the first lengthy story arc, after which Mort asks to work for Ezra to properly classify the items in Ezra’s store. He tells Ezra that if he ever doubts Mort, he’ll return to the past to prove himself right…with Ezra! This page comes from the second story arc, ‘Charlie’s Mother’, which begins with Mort & Ezra at a train station where they encounter the mother of Charlie McLarnin, a soldier who never came home from WWI. His mother waits for his return at the train station. Mort says he knows someone ‘who will certainly remember more than I do’ and asks for a few more minutes to bring more concrete news about what happened to Charlie. And with that Ezra follows Mort through a fog and to Chemin des Dames, France in 1917! Mort & Ezra are now soldiers under attack by Germans in WWI in a unit that Charlie McLarnin also serves in. I won’t spoil the story for those who have not read it, but Charlie has actually been back for a long time – his mother just does not know it. Social/Sharing |
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Comments on this Artwork
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Suat Tong Ng
Member Since 2009
1 - Posted on 6/28/2024
Pages from this particular chapter of Mort Cinder are pretty rare. Nice work getting this!
Adam Law 
Member Since 2012
1 - Posted on 6/28/2024
Love this page and always enjoy being able to look at pages of original art from this series. Thanks for posting and congratulations!
Jeff Singh
Member Since 2004
1 - Posted on 6/28/2024
Great page and what a write up! You should be writing for the APA! Mort Cinder was such a watershed moment in both comics and in Breccia's career. His greatness was already apparent but what spawned from here over the next 20 some years is unparalleled in comics.It is a shame he is not better known in North America.
Comic Art Channel
Member Since 2018
1 - Posted on 6/28/2024
Freakin artistic masterpiece. Love the 2 different techniques on the same scene of the first 2 panels. Really demonstrates what he was doing throughout the entire strip series. And of course the large images on the final 2 tiers. Just an amazing example.
Ruben DaCollector
Member Since 2008
1 - Posted on 6/28/2024
A piece of absolute mastery of the sequential art form. With all due respect, this is levels above anything else being done in comics in 1962 and it isn't even close.
Ron S
Member Since 2007
1 - Posted on 6/28/2024
That's just beautiful. I need to find this story in English!!
Chris K.
Member Since 2008
1 - Posted on 6/28/2024
Ron S wrote:
That's just beautiful. I need to find this story in English!!
I can help you with that!!
Marcus Wai
Member Since 2005
1 - Posted on 6/29/2024
Communicates the action and tone in a manner with purpose and verisimilitude. The transition effects of the first two panels are brilliantly done. Even with computer effects today, there'd have to be so many mouse swipes and clicks required that it wouldn't be art any more.
DC's Showcase
Member Since 2006
1 - Posted on 6/29/2024
A literal explosion of technique! Just amazing.
Aaron N.
Member Since 2009
1 - Posted on 6/29/2024
That's some high-grade material you got there. Thanks for the detailed write-up.
GAB R
Member Since 2007
1 - Posted on 6/29/2024
wow! This is one of the best pages from this chapter.
all panels are great without excemption.
particulary love the top tier with these two almost simetrical composition panels
Gene Park
Member Since 2004
1 - Posted on 6/29/2024
Great page...nothing like the American comic art that was being produced in 1962!
Boris B
Member Since 2012
1 - Posted on 7/1/2024
Top quality page from one of best drawn comic books - ever! Huge congrats
R Berman
Member Since 2018
1 - Posted on 11/11/2024
Informative write-up and interesting concept, somewhere between Quantum Leap and Moorcock's Eternal Champion.
Chris K.
Member Since 2008
1 - Posted on 11/11/2024
R Berman wrote:
Informative write-up and interesting concept, somewhere between Quantum Leap and Moorcock's Eternal Champion.
Quantum Leap...wow, that brings back some memories!
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