Guabaman Origins

I created Guabaman in a saturday morning in 2002 while having an interesting chat with a couple of cartoonists friends of mine at my house in Puerto Rico. 

One of them was one the renowned Looney Toons cartoonist and Yenny creator, David Alvarez. Others in that meeting where JJ Esteban, who latter assisted me on many of the animated episodes and my best friend/animation teacher, the late Hector Virella.

We where talking about the new Spider-man movie that was released that year and my friends were encouraging me to create a parody of it. 

I'm never interested on trends, and for me, a Spider-man parody at the moment felt as a trend.

 It was Virella who came up with the name, almost by chance, when, on his soft and timid tone of voice blurbed: "If we where to have a puertorrican Spider-man, he should be called Guaba-man".

There was silence. 

And I asked: "Why Guaba-man?"

"Because the guaba is a native spider from Puerto Rico".

Immediately there was a pouring of jokes and laughter, everybody was spitting jokes at the same time about how ridiculous the name sounded, at leas for us. And one of the jokes that stroked me was "how Guabaman shoot his web". And that was the base for the first episode subject.

Sadly, Virella is no longer with us anymore. In December 2003, he passed away as a result of a stroke while on his sleep. He was on his mid 40's. He was a good friend, an exceptional cartoonist and a master animator. He was so good that once he submitted a portfolio to Warner and they thought he couldn't have done his drawings by hand. Here is a little doodle he send to me once in a letter expressing his love for his work.

"Hector, wherever you are right now... keep drawing, that's your blessing".