My trip to Winnipeg to take in a Blue Bombers Game also served another purpose, and that was to do some research for a story that will appear in Crankshaft around this time next year (So how far ahead do I work? Do the math.) While there, I also became a story in the Winnipeg Free Press. That story is presented here along with some more pix:
Here we go, Crankshaft! Here we go!
Sometime during the next year, Jeff Murdoch, a character in a comic strip that runs each day in the Free Press will head to Winnipeg to attend a Blue Bombers game.
Tom Batiuk, who created Crankshaft, which revolves around the life of namesake school bus driver Ed Crankshaft, is a big fan of the Blue and Gold.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
Ohio-based Crankshaft comic illustrator Tom Batiuk will finally see his beloved Blue Bombers in person Friday night.
That, in itself, wouldn’t be particularly noteworthy if not for the fact that Batiuk lives near Cleveland and discovered his favourite Canadian Football League team — and Canadian football — quite by accident more than a decade ago.
Starved for some gridiron action when the National Football League locked out its players in a bitter 2011 labour dispute, he was flipping channels and found the Bombers.
He’s been hooked ever since.
“I just started looking around, I caught the Canadian Football League and I started checking in on games… I thought, ‘Buck Pierce, what a great name,’” Batiuk said with a laugh, referring to the former starting quarterback who played four seasons and is now the team’s offensive co-ordinator.
“I started following them on a regular basis and I just kind of fell in love with (the team).”
As a result, the Bombers logo — the signature “W,” along with a previous iteration featuring a lightning bolt blasting out of a football that he prefers — has appeared from time to time on the clothing worn by characters in the strip.
Which brings the story back to Jeff Murdoch — Ed Crankshaft’s son-in-law in the strip — whose storyline will take him to Princess Auto Stadium, where he’ll see the Big Blue in CFL action.
But it’s Batiuk, who works a year in advance on the comic strip, who has spent the last few days in the city and is taking in his first Bombers game in the flesh Friday
