The Merchandise Guide
Comics: Argentina
Compiled by Martin Willey

In the late 1990s I received an email from Argentina about a comic series published there in the 1970s, written by Jorge Claudio Morhain (born 1942). Unfortunately there was no further details.

Morhain has a blog which mentions the series (as "Cosmos 1999"), noting the art was by Mario Morhain, his brother (1945-2022, he would later work for English comics including Commando in the 2000s). They worked together frequently, including on another Gerry Anderson series, Captain Scarlet (El Capitan Escarlata).

In the mid-1970s, the Argentina publisher Editorial MO.PA.SA. published unlicensed comic adaptions of US and UK series. Several of the titles that the Mohain brothers worked on, individually and together, are Planet of the Apes (El Planeta de los Simios), Kung Fu, The Six Million Dollar Man (El Hombre Nuclear) and The Bionic Woman (La Mujer Nuclear), Starsky & Hutch, Police Woman (Mujer Policia), The Streets of San Francisco (Las calles de San Francisco, although the comic title was actually Serpico, from the film). Each comic was monthly, with a colour cover with a black and white comic of about 32 pages, often quite poorly printed.

Most of the MO.PA.SA.titles had a relatively short run, with Planet of the Apes having 7 issues. Their younger titles seem to have had longer runs (The Pink Panther, La Pantera Rosa had 21 issues).

In the 1970s, Argentina was ruled by a series of military juntas with brutal repression, while it notorious for being a safe haven for former Nazis who had fled Europe after World War 2. Although the US government supported the anti-communist "dirty war", it was culturally isolated until the 1990s.