This Crankshaft book was published by Andrews/McMeel in 1992 and came about as a result of my moving the strip from Creators Syndicate to Universal Press Syndicate. It features a beautiful wrap-around cover by Chuck Ayers my co-conspirator on Crankshaft. It depicts the most iconic trope from the strip… Crankshaft backing into George Keesterman’s mailbox. The school bus, when our son was in school, used to turn around in our driveway, and one day the bus driver asked me if I was in love with the bush that’s at the end of our drive. I chuckled at the joke, but the driver wasn’t joking… one day the bush was gone, the victim a backing-up mishap.
It turned out that Andrews/McMeel was a pretty compulsive compiler, so rather than being a best-of tome, this book was compiled from day one. The subsequent book would all pick up where the previous one had left off, so, for completists, these Andrews/McMeel books are a nice comprehensive collection of Crankshaft’s early years.
