Urban and Twit Artist Draws His Final Panel

I don’t know where to begin. I truly can’t comprehend the fact that I have completed the last panels of the Urban and Twit comic strip series.

It seems like yesterday that I was sitting through meetings with Steve Knauss, the then editor-in-chief, and drawing up concepts for the strip.

Now that the series has come to a close (for now) I thought it would be appropriate to say farewell by talking a little bit about U&T.

When I was a sophomore, I realized that I hadn’t gotten very involved in school. Freshman year had been a little overwhelming for me.

I had just come down from Connecticut and was trying to become acclimated to the Tampa environment.I joined the radio and liked it, and realized I wanted to be more involved in the university.

I remember picking up a copy of The Minaret and noticing that they did not have a comic strip.

Like Ronald Reagan, that was the first thing I always flipped to when reading a newspaper, so I emailed Steve and inquired about it.

He replied and said that starting one would be a great idea, so I met up with him and the Commentary Editor Simos Farrell and we began discussing the project.

The only concept we had was to make fun of the school; both Steve and Simos were so excited about the project that they gave me the creative freedom to do what I wanted.

Thus began the real brainstorming process. When I left the meeting, I started thinking that I wanted to do a “buddy” comic.

I wanted to pair a regular UT student with some fantastic creature that would pick on him.

My original concept for the student-character Urban never really changed, but the fantastic creature changed in size.

Yes, Twit’s original drawings had him standing at half the size of Urban, but in an effort to make him look less like a pet, I made Twit slightly taller than Urban.

Before I knew it, I had my two characters. However, I had no names.

I knew I wanted to pair up a two-syllable name with a one-syllable name (I think I have Starsky and Hutch syndrome) and I wanted them to bear the letters “UT.”  Make sense now?  That’s how Urban and Twit were born.

As I said, Urban and Twit were originally going to be UT students, but due to the fact that I was running out of material during the first few weeks, I kicked them off campus and decided to give them jobs in the one other thing I was involved in: radio.

The radio world opened up a whole new slew of material I could comment on. In addition to observational humor, I was making fun of the blue guy from Oprah, Tiger Woods and the Grinch.

My favorite was when I made the comic about Sarah Palin. When it hit the internet, it was the source of some political controversy through the comment feed.

The radio opened the doors for the secondary characters that appeared in last week’s comic.

Allison was Urban’s girlfriend, whose name I based off of somebody I knew in high school. The General Manager Mr. Fulluvit was a mix between a general manager at a radio station I interned for and Dr. Klaww from Inspector Gadget.

Mike from 66.6 “The Tool” was based off of one of the brothers in my fraternity, with whom I have a friendly rivalry.

But let’s get back to the stars themselves. Aside from Urban’s tall hair, Urban and Twit are like the two sides of myself.

Urban says the things that I would actually say and Twit says the things that I would like to say.

Occasionally a little bit of Twit comes out of me, but these are most often the times I get in trouble.

And did I forget to mention that Twit has the best fashion sense?

Whether or not you’re an avid U&T enthusiast, I want to thank you for reading my comic strip.

Every week I’ve put thought and time into creating something funny, and whenever I get a text or Facebook message from somebody saying they enjoyed this week’s comic, I know this venture was more than worthwhile.

I would also like to thank The Minaret, its readers, my friends and family and everybody who has supported me throughout the last few years.

As much as it saddens us that U&T has come to a close, be on the lookout. I have an optimistic feeling that they might make a comeback someday.