The other day we were able to chat with Isaac Sánchez. He has just published his fourth work, but we all knew him as Loulogio on the internet.
Sometimes, the personality that someone forges behind a screen defines their entire life. Other times, life chooses the personality we forge. We can say that in this case, Loulogio was a different personality from Isaac Sánchez, who after years dedicating himself to the world of comics has managed to dilute over time. The approach to him was spontaneous, like almost everything in a Barcelona Comic Fair. It was enough with a pleasant chat before hitting the recorder to understand that Loulogio was a fictional character as could be and Isaac is a transparent person. Practically the antipodes.
Who is Isaac Sanchez?
Isaac is a person who would never expect to be giving an interview to anyone, because until life changed me completely due to the subject of shows and I began to break down the barriers I had; I was a very introspective person. Isaac is happy in a cave.
And Isaac is content with that?
And with a goat that brings him packages from Amazon from time to time. That’s all Isaac wants. He is a person who just wants to draw and disappear, and the rest is the life that I have had to live.
And Loulogio, who is he?
Loulogio is the result of a guest writer taking a chapter of my life and leading me to do things that are out of the question with what has been the development of the usual series. The series was about some things and a writer came and said, let’s experiment. Some writer in my life said, let’s try things.
After eight or nine years on YouTube, what made you exploit your most artistic facet?
Just before starting with all the “Batamanta” and all the fishing, I won a prize right at the Barcelona Comic Fair, with a comic called The Return of the Fish Man. I won the Coll Award and it was very exciting for me because I was just starting out in the industry. It was like my starting signal in the industry as a cartoonist. But I ate the sweet tooth of the show and little by little without realizing it I put aside what I really loved to do.
And had you had any conversations with any publishers?
I was about to publish with the Laberinto publishing house. In fact, I didn’t publish with Labyrinth because it closed when I had two comics drawn for them. In other words, my career was going to be a cartoonist, but I was very sweet to make people laugh, to go on tours until I stopped being so sweet and it was a little more bitter and I said, I’m going to go back to being what I was.
What happened there?
Nothing, the natural course of the goat pulls to the mountain. We are still talking about goats. One is what it is and I also wanted to try it. the problem with that is when you are already known for things and they identify you with something. I dedicate myself to making joke videos, I dedicate myself to doing silly things out there and they already identify you as… it is difficult to see more things. So, for me it was like breaking with an identity, but my true identity was not that. Where I identified myself and I really felt was what I tell you, with my goat and my drawings. So at first it was a bit complicated, but my guts were rumbling. My guts were rumbling from starting to draw.
How was the moment to leave everything and start drawing?
Like almost everything in my life, it was on a hunch. I mean, when I was a youtuber, not even back then, being a youtuber was a leap into the void that made no sense. It wasn’t even charged. The batamanta did not have monetization nor was there anything but my heart told me to pull this way. I have always been guided by hunches and I felt that it was time. Well, more than feeling that it was time, I felt that the years were passing and that I did not want to be 60 years old and not have tried to do what I love to do with all the fears and risks that this entails, but it is a reason from the heart and not respond to nothing else.
How was the public reception?
Very good. It was perfectly understood, that is, it was understood. Of course, the only problem was that I had to prove things and the pressure to prove something is not good for any author or any work. In other words, doing a play because you have fun, because you want to, and that’s fine. They all have a commitment, in all of them you show something. But here I felt that I had to show that it was not a whim, that it was not a…
A youtuber book?
That it wasn’t a marketing product, that it wasn’t a t-shirt. That he loved what he did. And above all, I love comics very much and I respect comic artists and the medium very much, and I did not want that medium to see me in an intrusive way or see me as taking advantage of the medium, I wanted to contribute to the medium. And those were the main fears I had, but it turned out very well, it turned out perfect, so much so that now I’ve had four projects and it’s still working.
What do you think of youtubers’ books?
Well, honestly, I’m in favor of it. Let’s see, I haven’t read all of them, not half, not even a third. But I don’t see anything wrong with a kid approaching reading in any way. I also approached reading by reading books about cutting out ninja turtles. Literally they didn’t have much value, but we are already breaking the wall with the paper. Whatever it is that the paper, that the reading reaches people. Who knows what will come next or that the product will be good. Sometimes we judge without knowing it. For me it is positive.
Is it an approach to reading?
Of course, in fact, talking to booksellers, I often find that many books that are reviled for being a “marketinian” product, people who register online for the first time to buy in such a bookstore, a high percentage return to buy other things. So something works, not all of them, but a significant enough percentage to count. For me it’s ok.
I’d like to talk about your latest comic. It’s very hard. How was the hindsight exercise?
In this comic I have been open to the channel, in fact, the only fear I have with this comic is that I have been too honest. I am a defender of honesty in the creation of stories and I even have a verse from Celaya tattooed, about staining yourself in everything you do. I feel like I’ve even been too honest. I think people are going to read me naked, open in the channel and when you read it in its entirety you will see to what extent I have completely undressed. It gives me a certain blush, but I had to do it, again a hunch.
In the last few pages you talk to your father, what was it like talking to your father like that?
For me it is the hardest moment, I did not want to draw it but it is cathartic. It’s cathartic and it’s honest. I am talking to my father and to the reader as well. I am confessing things through him that I want the reader to know, I want to be honest with the reader and I want to tell them that I am a very strange guy and that everything they have read is a lie and a truth at the same time.
Lie and truth?
The play revolves around a song called the Reasonable lie and it seemed very interesting to me that the memories are all white lies that each one is, he has the memories adjusted to what suits him and what greater white lie is there to make a story about your life. You’re going to lie, you’re going to mold and you’re really living it. and why the memories we have in real life are valid and the ones I’ve created in fiction are not. If in the end the two are fiction and that’s where the shots go.
Is it your biography?
A little, but it is more the biography of a place. is the biography of the place where I grew up that I think has a special magic. I am obsessed with places. I always believe that places have an identity, they have a soul, they have personality, they have life and death. And I wanted to convey what I felt when I thought about that place, but for that I had to contextualize it. The characters, the situations, you have to live there for some time so that later you feel what it is not to be there, the absence.
In fact there is no background that is not from that place. When the characters move from there there is no background because I wanted it to be just that place. That place is magical, outside of it there is nothing so sometimes the character comes out of there and the background is white. For me it is the biography of that site.
To finish, how do you see the comic sector?
I think it’s picking up quite a bit. There is always fear of cataclysm and apocalypse, more so in the Spanish sector, which is very unstable and from what I understand, after the pandemic there has been a great rebound and booksellers are very happy. And I couldn’t be happier with what I’m selling, with the situation I have… in the end, it’s my experience that I can speak for.
If it is true that for any kid who is starting out it is hard, it has always been very hard to start in comics in Spain. I was one of those kids who were with folders feeling rejection everywhere. And, seeing that you also side with a publisher and say how I can sell it, even if I like it. Who is going to buy it? Why are they going to buy it? It’s very complicated. But nevertheless I think there are opportunities, few, very few, I wish there were more, but it is not yet apocalyptic.
Isaac Sánchez, not Loulogio, has opened his heart and his person, as he has said on channel. In his new comic High tide baths in the Dolmen publishing house that you can now buy and enjoy, and anyway, you will travel with him to the Badalona coast.