In this seventh volume, we see the changes in tone that now characterize Funky Winkerbean. Funky becomes more of a reality-based comic strip that depicts contemporary issues in a thought-provokingand sensitive manner. In 1992 Tom Batiuk did something even more radical: he rebooted and restructured the strip, establishing that the characters had graduated from high school. From then on the series progresses in real time. Funky Winkerbean placed Batiuk at the forefront of a new genre in comic art history. His bold characterizations and dramatic plots are engaging for his readers-teens, parents, and educators alike-because they are universal stories that people can identify with. Realizing there are many comic strips for readers interested in a fantasy world, Batiuk provides an alternative by creating stories that are powerful, real, and inspiring. "My job is to present stories that will interest and engage readers," he says. "In doing so, I try to make the humor authentic and natural so that my characters are reacting just as the reader might. I think that mixing humor with serious and real themes heightens the readers' interest." Following his own muse has roused a fervent following for Batiuk. Funky has "become an untouchable comic strip," even if its creator "does do work that's different from the other comics on the comics page," said Brendan Burford, general manager, syndication, at King Features.

Since its newspaper debut in 1972, the comic strip Funky Winkerbean has chronicled the journey through life of a group of students from the fictitious West View High School. This twelfth volume presents strips from 2005, 2006, and 2007. Mixing humor with serious, real-life issues, this volume of The Complete Funky Winkerbean demonstrates that comics that entertain us can also help us comprehend and navigate life's most difficult challenges. This volume includes the story arc dealing with Lisa Moore's heartbreaking battle with breast cancer, which became a finalist in the cartooning category of the 2008 Pulitzer Prizes. Other stories include Lisa defending comic shop owner John Howard in an obscenity lawsuit, Wally's struggles with PTSD upon returning from the war in Afghanistan, and his return to Afghanistan with his wife Becky as part of a project to clear landmines. Marriages, graduations, births, and even the building of a new school all weave around and through Lisa's story.

The characters of the Funky cartoon universe deal with the challenges of middle age This latest installment of The Complete Funky Winkerbean presents the comic strips from 2008, 2009, and 2010 and ushers the original Funky characters into middle age. In true Funky fashion, the characters have to grapple with very serious issues: nearly fatal car crashes, a war abroad, and a tanking economy at home. These years also mark the first appearance of Cayla, and her arrival on the scene is where cartoonist Tom Batiuk's new time-jump era begins to coalesce and take on its unique identity.

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.

Since its debut in 1987, Crankshaft has engendered reader loyalty and affection with its wry wit, engaging storylines, and identifiable characters. Created by Tom Batiuk and drawn by Chuck Ayers, the strip offers plenty of humour but also tackles serious issues like adult literacy, school violence, and the challenges of aging. Roses in December is a touching collection of two Crankshaft storylines of characters who find themselves dealing with the incurable condition of Alzheimer's disease. First, Ed Crankshaft's best friend Ralph is confronted with the trauma of his wife Helen's worsening Alzheimer's. He never knows if the love of his life will recognize him on those days that he visits her at Sunny Days Nursing Home. Ralph and Helen's love story unfolds with humour and heartbreak. In the second story arc, Crankshaft's neighbour Lucy McKenzie also exhibits symptoms of Alzheimer's and eventually is moved to Sunny Days Nursing Home by her sister Lillian. The fourteen year struggles of Lucy, Helen, and their loved ones are elegantly told, preserving their dignity and reminding us that sometimes a sense of humour can be our greatest possession during life's trials. Through the deceptively simple medium of the daily comic strip, Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers address the profound effects of Alzheimer's disease in a thoughtful and occasionally humorous way. Roses in December includes a resource guide for caregivers, patients, and practitioners.

Follow award-winning cartoonist Tom Batiuk as he chronicles Funky's evolution from gags to situational humor to behavioral humor In this eighth volume, Funky Winkerbean continues to move forward in real time, tackling issues of relevance and substance with characters whose lives are increasingly fateful and destined. Funky has placed Batiuk at the forefront of a new genre in comic art history as the strip pursues stories ahead of their time: guns in schools and teen suicide. The humor in Funky continues to grow as it evolves from sitcom gags to a deeper and more engaging behavioral style of humor.

He blusters and grumbles. He rants and raves. He tries to outgun the school kids chasing after the bus on his route. But in his heart, Ed Crankshaft has a decent streak a mile wide. Patiently explaining death to his grandson Max. Comforting his friend Ralph as Ralph's wife descends into Alzheimer's. Thrusting flowers and candy at his son-in-law on a nearly forgotten wedding anniversary. The star of the hit comic strip "Crankshaft" is a gentle soul stuck in a cantankerous mood. With a supporting cast that includes Ed's two daughters, Chris and Pam; Pam's husband, Jeff; and their kids, Max and Mindy, "Crankshaft" appeals to families everywhere who steadfastly deal with intergenerational cares and conflicts. As one critic said: ""Crankshaft" is a witty, thoughtful commentary on the trials and tribulations of today's senior citizens." But, of course, "Crankshaft" is so much more. The strip's approach to Alzheimer's generated countless letters and e-mails, as did Crankshaft's near-death illness. Hilarious and clever, honest and moving, "Crankshaft" both keeps readers laughing at the curmudgeon's pranks and pondering life's real meaning in this collection, "Your Favorite...Crab Cakes!" It's a balancing act that's rarely attempted in the comics--and with "Crankshaft," it works admirably.

"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.

IN

IN

Tom Batiuk was a junior high school art teacher in Elyria, Ohio, when he created a comic panel aimed at teens for the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram. That panel was the precursor to what became Batiuk's award-winning comic strip Funky Winkerbean. Since its debut on March 27, 1972, Funky Winkerbean has chronicled the lives of a group of students from the fictitious Westview High School. This volume, which presents the strip's first three years, introduces the strip's title character, Funky, and his friends Crazy Harry Klinghorn, Bull Bushka, Livinia Swenson, Les Moore, Holly Budd, and Roland Mathews. Principal Burch, counselor Fred Fairgood, and band director Harry L. Dinkle also make their first appearances. Funky fans will relive Les's misadventures in gym class and his unintentional attendance at the homecoming dance as he remains stuck on a climbing rope high above the gymnasium floor. They will remember Crazy Harry's ability to play pizzas like records and his air guitar virtuosity, and majorette Holly who never removed her uniform. They will recall the school's winless football team, and Harry Dinkle's attempts to win the Battle of the Bands despite the contest always coinciding with a natural disaster. Volume 1 contains a charming autobiographical introduction by Tom Batiuk that shares his early attempts at cartooning, discusses his teaching career, and explains the genesis of Funky. Subsequent volumes will each contain three years of Funky comic strips and will be published annually. Batiuk has been recognized for his humorous and entertaining portrayals of the students and staff at Westview and acclaimed for his sensitive treatment of social and educational issues.

Prelude is a collection of the early comic strips that bring Lisa and Les together. Introduced to readers of Funky Winkerbean in late 1984 as she experiences SAT test anxiety, Lisa becomes Les Moore's best friend and a pivotal character. Les and Lisa go to the prom, begin steady dating, and then break up. Over the summer, Les realizes how much he misses Lisa. When he gathers his courage and goes to her house, he is stunned to discover Lisa is pregnant with a child fathered by a jock from Walnut Tech. Lisa asks Les to be her coach in childbirth classes, and their friendship explodes from there. Prelude takes fans from the early days of their deep friendship through the birth of Lisa's baby and the baby's adoption.

It was the best of times, it was the OK of times In this fourth volume, award-winning cartoonist Tom Batiuk continues to chronicle the lives of the students and teachers at the fictitious Westview High School. By the 1980s Batiuk's talent for character- and story-driven work comes into its own. Harry L. Dinkle, the World's Greatest Band Director and Funky's first breakout character, is still marching along happily. He makes the first of two visits to the Tournament of Roses Parade, and his ego grows even larger. Harry proves a good match for the sitcom style of writing into which Batiuk's work on Funky is developing, and Crazy Harry thrives as the repository for the more outre ideas and situations. Whether it is living in his locker and playing frozen pizzas on his stereo, battling the Eliminator at Space Invaders, announcing that he is an air guitar player, or inviting Carl Sagan and ET to the Star Trek Convention that he and the school computer would host, Crazy becomes Funky Winkerbean's natural-born outlier. Meanwhile, Les Moore continues his angst-filled journey as the leader of the school's out crowd. He's still at his machine-gun-fortified hall monitor's post, trying to avoid getting beaten up by Bull Bushka, and generally dealing with school life as best he can. The strip-within-a-strip about John Darling and his bottom-of-the-ratings-barrel TV station, Channel One, which had spun off into its own strip called Darling, remains popular. And Batiuk introduces readers to a new character - the school mascot, a vest-wearing scapegoat that can speak its thoughts directly to the reader. In the 1980s we begin to see hints of the change in tone that will come to characterize Funky Winkerbean's later years. Starting with the coach's heart attack and his reflections on life and relationships, then shifting to teacher Ann Randall and her job loss, these story arcs intertwine with others to mark the shift from a simpler sitcom mode to a more complex narrative with subplots. Fans will enjoy each variety of comedy in Funky's subtle evolution from gags to situational humor to behavioral humor.

Funky, Les, and the gang pun their way through Westview High Since its debut on March 27, 1972, Funky Winkerbean has chronicled the lives of a group of students from the fictitious Westview High School. This second volume, which presents strips from 1975, 1976, and 1977, sees the comic strip rounding into the form that will carry it into its middle years. With gentle humor and not-so-gentle puns, Les, Funky, Crazy Harry, and the gang comment on life's little absurdities. Funky begins to ponder why there are cloakrooms in elementary schools when no one wears cloaks. Crazy Harry, firmly ensconced in his locker-as-living-quarters, moves out because his row of lockers has gone condo. Les Moore blossoms as a character and replaces Funky as the leader of the school's out crowd when he is seen alone on his bicycle at the local drive-in movie. The computer at Westview High becomes sentient and subjects the students to its obsession with Star Trek, including holding Star Trek conventions at the school. Westview's principal and teachers cope with it all with irony or Zen-like detachment. In Volume 1, we met Harry L. Dinkle, the band director at West-view High. The self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Band Director," Dinkle is based on a retired band director from Avon Lake, Ohio, who was also the band director at the junior high school that Tom Batiuk attended. Band camps, the Fall Battle of the Bands, and the annual torrential downpours become fixtures in the strip. Other familiar themes are the turkeys and fruitcakes that show up through the years as band fund-raisers. The Westview Scapegoats go national and march off to the 1976 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Harry L. Dinkle marches into real life, lending his name to a line of Dinkles band shoes, actual band candy, and the "Harry L. Dinkle March" composed by Andy Clark. He even shows up on scoreboards at college football games. Volume 2 includes an introduction in which Tom Batiuk shares the creative and evolutionary processes in his development of these characters. Subsequent volumes will each contain three years of Funky strips and will be published annually. Batiuk has been recognized for his humorous and entertaining portrayals of the students and staff at Westview and acclaimed for his sensitive treatment of social and educational issues.