Crankshaft is a comic strip about a character by the same name — an elderly, curmudgeonly school bus driver —which debuted on June 8, 1987. Written by Tom Batiuk and drawn by Dan Davis,[2] Crankshaft is a spin-off from Batiuk’s comic strip Funky Winkerbean.[3] Prior to April 2, 2017, the strip was drawn by Chuck Ayers.