Crankshaft
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Mailboxes beware: Crankshaft's just around the corner!
Ed Crankshaft, the lively creation of Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers, stars in this Crankshaft collection. It's a hilarious depiction of an irritable but endearing school bus driver and life with his daughter Pam, son-in-law, Jeff, and grandchildren, Mindy and Max.
With cynical wit and biting humor, Crankshaft sees the world in absolutes. Although he comes across gruff and grumbly, Ed's really an old softy with a keen sense of humor that sometimes surprises even himself. The crafty curmudgeon isn't always tough-relationships with his grandchildren, his cat, Pickles, and the problems of growing older in a rapidly changing world show Crankshaft's more sensitive side.
Batiuk (creator of Funky Winkerbean) and Ayers's unique portrayal of life at the wheel of a school bus has delighted readers since the strip began.
Tom Batiuk
Tom Batiuk is a graduate of Kent State University. His celebrated Funky Winkerbean comic strip concluded its 50-year run on December 31, 2022. Its spinoff, Crankshaft, is still carried in almost 500 newspapers throughout the United States. Batiuk was a finalist in the cartooning category of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize awards for the series of daily comic strips that chronicled the death of longtime character Lisa Moore, which were collected in the Lisa's Legacy Trilogy. His Funky Winkerbean series and Roses in December were finalists for the 2016 Eisner Awards.
More by Tom Batiuk
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