Comic strips

GoComics Interviews Tom Batiuk About Crankshaft

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D. D. Degg January 4, 2023 1 minute 1 comment

At the beginning of this year Ed Crankshaft got into his bus and drove from New York (King Features) to Kansas City (Andrews McMeel). The GoComics Team interviewed the comic strip’s creator Tom Batiuk about the character.

Excerpted from the interview:

What inspired character Ed Crankshaft and his dynamic personality?

A fan suggested that I add a a school bus driver to “Funky”, and when I did I based him totally on the bus driver I had when I was in elementary school. My usual trick was to take someone from real life and exaggerate their traits to create a cartoon character. In the case of Crankshaft, I had to tone my real bus driver down or he would have been too unreal to be a cartoon character.