The Pomeroy Daily Sentinel is reporting that Crankshaft will replace
the Retail comic strip in a few AIM Media Midwest newspapers:
If you like your newspaper’s comic strips locally sourced along with your produce, you’re in luck.
Starting this week, The Daily Sentinel, Gallipolis Daily Tribune and Point Pleasant Register, is picking up “Crankshaft,” written and drawn by Ohio natives Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis. The King Features comic strip replaces “Retail,” which was retired by its creator on Feb. 23.
The Daily Sentinel has a nice article about the local cartoonists.
“‘Crankshaft’ is a very Ohio-centric strip,” said Akron-born and Kent State-graduated Batiuk, who in 1987 spun “Crankshaft” off from the popular “Funky Winkerbean” strip he created in 1972. “It would probably have a greater relatability to people who live here in Ohio because I’m writing about my roots.”
Davis, who lives in Celina and took over drawing the strip from Chuck Ayers in 2016, agrees that “Crankshaft” is infused with Ohio-ness, “a good Midwestern sensibility.”
Some tidbits about Tom Batuik gleaned from the article:
Batiuk lets real life play out in both of his strips with serialized stories, drama and time jumps mixed in with the gags. A Batiuk character can live, laugh and die in the world he’s created. He says both his strips are “about a quarter inch removed from real life.”
“I like telling stories,” he said, although instead of a gag a day in the final panel, “you’re doing more of a behavioral humor. I like that, it sort of comes out of the interaction between the characters and it grows out of the stories.”
Some background about Dan Davis:
Davis, who lives in Celina and took over drawing the strip from Chuck Ayers in 2016, agrees that “Crankshaft” is infused with Ohio-ness, “a good Midwestern sensibility.”
Davis has drawn Batman for DC Comics, “Blondie” and “Alley Oop” and continues to draw “Garfield.”
Their work ethic – “they work about a year ahead writing and drawing Crankshaft.”
The story of the switch is carried by other papers of the chain –
the Urbana Daily Citizen and The Hillsboro Times-Gazette.
AIM Media Midwest, LLC owns and operates 17 daily newspapers, 15 weekly newspapers, affiliated websites and a variety of related weekly and specialty publications in Ohio and West Virginia (one daily in Point Pleasant, West Virginia). The company is an affiliate of AIM Media Texas, LLC and AIM Media Indiana, LLC, and both entities are managed by AIM Media Management of Dallas, Texas.
Good Lord. No wonder newspapers are going out of business with decision makers like this. It’s not 1978!