Tom Batiuk

Real Life On The Funny Pages

By Marie Elium • Photo by Kim Stahnke

In his rural Medina County studio, comic strip creator Tom Batiuk is surrounded by the touchstones of a long and successful career propelled by characters whose lives have been much like our own, and, in some ways, his.

Batiuk, 76, gave “Funky Winkerbean” then later “Crankshaft” and their wide supporting casts permission to be themselves, not a comic page version, but one closer to real life. He’s steered them through teen angst, job loss, PTSD, cancer, drunk driving, death and other tough topics. To know his characters is to know ourselves.

Batiuk’s most poignant storyline involved Lisa, whom he introduced as a fictional Westview High School student in “Funky Winkerbean” when the strip debuted five decades ago. Readers followed her through early adulthood then her breast cancer diagnosis and its aftermath. Her death was a groundbreaking and crushing conclusion for a comic strip character. “Lisa’s Story” garnered Batiuk a Pulitzer nomination.

Batiuk has more time these days for reflection, or at least some time, since he’s no longer producing two daily comic strips. He maintained a grueling schedule with his long-time collaborator/artist Chuck Ayers for “Funky Winkerbean,” which he continues with “Crankshaft,” now drawn by Dan Davis. He retired “Funky Winkerbean” at the close of 2023, following Ayers’ wish to retire.

Batiuk’s storylines have played out in newspapers, books and online. His characters endured divorce, job loss and other bleak topics in message-driven ways that were inspiring, not preachy. Yet they’ve also had silly and wry storylines; a recent strip featured Ed Crankshaft using his flamethrower at an ice sculpture festival, with an amusingly disastrous conclusion.

A Cast Of Characters

If you’re not a fan of the funny pages or have only a passing knowledge of “Funky Winkerbean” and “Crankshaft,” consider their origin story.

Batiuk was born in Akron, grew up near Elyria and graduated from Kent State University. He taught middle school art for a few years and created a comic strip for the Elyria Chronicle Telegram newspaper. “Funky Winkerbean” grew from that initial strip and found a home in syndication where it eventually ran in hundreds of newspapers.

What started as a humorous yet typical comic strip in a high school setting with Funky at its center transitioned over the years to a broader and more story-oriented progression. Batiuk navigated numerous characters through life changes as they aged.

Ed Crankshaft, a grouchy school bus driver from “Funky Winkerbean,” spun off into his own comic strip in 1987 and was originally illustrated by Ayers. In “Crankshaft,” Batiuk has also guided his characters through situations familiar to aging adults. With frequent flashbacks, Crankshaft's coworkers, friends, neighbors and students provide depth to the strip, while dealing with Alzheimer’s, family relationships and current events.

With the decline of newspapers, once the primary source of readership for cartoonists, fans without a newspaper subscription can still see “Crankshaft” daily, online. On websites like GoComics, readers weigh in on the day’s offerings like old friends talking about people they know. Other content is on his website, tombatiuk.com.

Unlike some of his characters, Batiuk is in the enviable position of doing exactly what he has always wanted to do, an interest since childhood. He saw a copy of “The Flash” at the Rexall Drug Store in

Akron and “It rearranged my molecules,” he says. With a body of work that encompasses thousands of panels, his work and topics have aged as gracefully and as complexly as he has. For example, vintage “Funky Winkerbean” featured a school hall monitor with a machine gun on his desk — an uncomfortable image in this age of school shootings.

“Obviously, your experience changes things,” Batiuk comments. “I’m not the same person I was at 25. If you haven’t changed, it’s kind of unfortunate because you haven’t grown. That was the beauty of ‘Funky Winkerbean’… as (he) grew up, I grew up with him.”

Now “Crankshaft” hits closer to home.

“With ‘Crankshaft,’ the malapropisms just seem to fall out of my head. I’m writing more about colonoscopies and skin screenings. I feel I do have an obligation to report on what’s happening with me, and it probably comes through, but it’s not my goal,” Batiuk says.

With Davis drawing his cartoons, Batiuk can spend more time writing and developing stories for “Crankshaft,” working about six months ahead of schedule. He misses “Funky” but plans to work its characters into “Crankshaft.”

Batiuk is also compiling “The Complete Funky Winkerbean” into books through The Kent State University Press, each volume covering three years of comics. He’s just wrapped up volume 13, with plans for one book each year.

As Batiuk’s professional life takes on a new pace, he’s working out the next stage for Ed Crankshaft. “I would like to deal with him retiring from school bus driving; it does really help if you can draw from personal experience. My experiences are going to be more his experiences.”