"Crankshaft has touched on a raft of senior concerns with humor and often poignancy, including illness, mortality, making out a will, literacy, physical deterioration, vulnerability, security, and, recently, muggings and Alzheimer's disease." -The Telegraph, Alton, Illinois
 Cranky Ed Crankshaft is at it again, gunning his school bus so he can outdistance the little Johnson girl, backing over the Keestermans' mailbox, and holding up a record-breaking line of cars. It's just another day for the sixty-something curmudgeon who's earned a soft spot in the hearts of millions of readers.
 Originally spun off from the popular Funky Winkerbean strip, Crankshaft is an enormously popular character in his own right. Writer Tom Batiuk and artist Chuck Ayers combine their talent and insights into a strip that deals with aging in a heartfelt and funny way. "After sixty, it's just patch, patch, patch," says Crankshaft as he waits at the doctor's office.
 In this Crankshaft book, I've Still Got It!, readers can follow their beloved grandfather figure as he struggles with new challenges, from a friend with Alzheimer's disease to another friend who's been mugged. Along the way, Crankshaft continues his quest to finally read all the Popular Mechanics magazines daughter Pam has given him over the years.
 Although readers love Crankshaft because the strip makes them laugh, they also cherish the panel's honesty about issues faced by people of all ages, from literacy to illness to crime. They also appreciate the real feelings that linger just below the surface between Crankshaft and his housemates-daughter Pam, son-in-law Jeff, and their kids Max and Mindy, his stray cat, Pickles, and his girlfriend, Grace.

I've Still Got It!: A Crankshaft Collection

Comics & Graphic Novels

Ayers, Chuck

Batiuk, Tom

Comic Strips

Andrews McMeel Publishing

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.

Crankshaft

Graphic Novels

Confessions of a Baby Boomer: Memories of Things I Haven't Forgotten Yet

Lockport Ent/Books

The Toledo Mud Hens―a farm team for the Detroit Tigers―once had a budding pitcher named Ed Crankshaft. At least that’s how partners in cartooning, writer Tom Batiuk and artist Chuck Ayers, scripted the main character in Crankshaft. This enjoyable volume collects all of Crankshaft’s baseball-themed exploits. Fans will enjoy revisiting Crankshaft’s reminisces about his minor league pitching career and his comic attempts to recapture his youthful successes on the diamond. Strike Four! portrays Crankshaft’s greatest triumph when, on a sultry summer night in 1940, the Tigers came to town for an exhibition game against the Mud Hens. Pitching for the Mud Hens, Ed faced the top of the Tigers lineup―Hank Greenberg, Charlie Gehringer, and Rudy York―and struck out all three. The next year, the Tigers called Ed up to the major leagues, but unfortunately, so did Uncle Sam. After his service, Crankshaft returned home, but not to play baseball. He married and had two daughters. His grandson Max was his last chance to reprise his baseball career, but it was not meant to be. Strike Four! The Crankshaft Baseball Book allows Batiuk and Ayers to explore a man’s life and humorously and touchingly to examine how only barely touching the brass ring shaped it―and left him a little cranky.

Strike Four!: The Crankshaft Baseball Book

The Kent State University Press/Black Squirrel Books

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Books by Ayers, Chuck