Remember The Beano comic and the fun duo: Dennis the menace and his dog Gnasher?
As a kid I was never a big fan of any stars however I was a big Dennis the menace and Gnasher fan. I had joined their fan club and proudly wore the badges you were sent when you joined the fan club.
So when I met Carles "God"
Carles Garcia O'Dowd, who draws for the underground world of comics. http://carlesgarciaod.blogspot.com.es and asked him if he would be interested in drawing his own version of a SAM AND LULU but that I wanted to work together with him for the scripts of the stories to send out messages to do with current issues a little bit like the Argentinian comic character Mafalda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafalda
Article by artist Carles "GOD" Garcia O'Dowd
For as long as I can remember, drawing has been the skill I've put more time and effort into. As soon as I had the opportunity, I decided to go for art studies. I started my Fine Arts degree in Barcelona in 2006 and the next two years I continued as an international exchange student in the HFBK in Hamburg. The following year I spent in Guadalajara, Mexico before returning to Barcelona. After that, I spent six months doing an internship in the studio of Le Dernier Cri in Marseille, France and 3 months in Maine, USA, with the Beehive Collective. College has enabled me to experiment, learn and expand; but I mostly consider myself self-taught.
I was always fond of comics, animation and video games and during my years in college I was always haunted by the stigma of coming from an illustration environment; but travelling and discovering other ways of functioning has helped me consolidate my role as a drawer and my way of working by using illustration as my main medium.
Besides, my trajectory has constantly been linked to social struggles, the punk and queer movements and various alternative scenes, leading me to search for new ways of providing an outlet for my concerns as a graphic artist within a contemporary context and building an interest in art that transgresses the limits of galleries, institutions and commercial circuits, thus still preserving a strong commitment to such a classical medium as drawing.
This has led me to an immersion into the world of self-edited press and zines, tattooing, alternative collectives and, in short, to graphic production linked to the international underground scene.
About how I got involved:
I met Nathalie about six months ago at the presentation of BOSTA2, a magazine I edit with my friend Pablo Taladro. Pablo was screenprinting SamSays merchandise for her and since he was leaving for Uruguay and still had stuff unprinted, I was to take over that job and had to talk to Nathalie about it.
She told me about Sam's story and the whole purpose of her project and I felt I could relate to it in many ways. I think it's good that she makes such an effort to get us folks in the 1st world to rethink our consumer habits and to be encouraged to find other ways of consuming that are more ethical and less harmful. She was also interested in my radical point of view about different issues and my collaboration with the Beehive Collective http://beehivecollective.org and gave me the opportunity to create several comic strips about relevant social issues with Sam and Lulu as the main characters. What got me really engaged and thrilled was that Nathalie gave me absolute freedom to craft the stories, and that during our conversations on the phone she would give me good ideas and encourage me to go on with no censorship whatsoever.
My inspiration for these comics is the people who are critical with what surrounds them and stand up for what they think is right. I guess I've "used" Sam's character as a messenger to be able to, in my own modest way, speek out about things that need to be talked about.
