HOLT - Amid his collection of 15 pinball and electro-mechanical cabinets, Ryan Claytor's 1972 Swinger machine is his point-of-pride project.

It was dead when Claytor picked it up from the former owner's barn. He'd told Claytor it was getting tossed out if he didn't come along to take it.

Like other machines of its era, the Swinger was built to withstand the kicks and slaps of less-skilled players. He knew the lights of the psychedelic playing board could be relit with enough effort.

Struggles to get the five-bumper, two player game working again prompted him to seek out help from Nick Baldridge, who hosts a podcast on electro-mechanical machines called For Amusement Only.

With his help, Claytor got the machine running "screaming fast," he said.

But the collaboration bore other fruit: Claytor's latest comic, "Coin-Op Carnival - Electrifying Tales of Mechanical Contraptions."

"I’m the technical guy, he’s the artist," Baldridge said.

Claytor, who lives in Holt, writes, illustrates and publishes his own comic books through Elephant Eater Comics.

He's also a professor at Michigan State University, teaching studio art classes in the Department of Art, Art History and Design and serving as director of the MSU Comics Forum, an annual event focused on comic books complete with talks from prominent artists and exhibitions.

Claytor's love of comics dates back to being a six or seven-year-old reading Disney comics.

Pinball also came into his life at an early age. His family owned several machines during his childhood, including a 1979 Charlie's Angel game which was sold and replaced with two other pinball machines, a Flash Gordon and a Mr. and Mrs. Pacman.

Claytor and Baldridge's friendship blossomed after working on the Swinger machine. Before they'd ever met in-person, they agreed to do a joint family vacation.

"Luckily that turned out well," Baldridge said.

It was on one of these joint family vacations that Claytor first raised the idea of a comic book on pinball, its history and the underlying mechanisms of cabinets from the era before computerization

The first book in what will be a four-part series debuted earlier this year at the Texas Pinball Festival, which advertises itself as the largest pinball festival in the United States.

Zack Kruse, an English Ph.D. candidate at MSU, remembers a lengthy conversation with Clayor prior to his decision to do "Coin-Op Carnival."

"I told him if this is the thing you care about, this is the project you have to do, because you know it so well, you care about it so much, and it will be a beautiful and wonderful thing when it's done," he recalled.

And it was, Kruse said.

Claytor's illustrations range from comic book panels depicting the career play of prolific pinball designer Wayne Neyens to detailed drawings of the technical components used in pinball machines.

Readers also learn about the 1968 arcade game Space Pilot — debuting in the midst of the Space Race — charging players to maneuver their spacecraft to one of four designation locations. The book includes a paper cut-and-glue mock-up of the machine.

It also features an interview with 100-year-old Wayne Neyens, who designed more than 150 pinball games, as well as reviews of different machines and a technical explanation of relays, central to the operation of electro-mechanical games.

A warm reception among pinball luminaries includes praise from Roger Sharpe, widely considered to be the savior of pinball, the man who helped convince New York City officials to overturn a three-decade pinball ban.

The ban was rooted in the notion that pinball was a game of chance, amounting to gambling in the eyes of some.

A machine from the 1950s in Claytor’s basement stands as a testament to this perception, warning would-be players that it was a game for adults only.

Sharpe was hired by the Amusement and Music Operators Association to show that pinball was a game of skill.

In the New York City Council chambers in 1976, he did just that, saying where his next shot would go and proceeding to send the ball flying to its intended destination. With that, the ban was overturned.

“You have packed a heck of a lot of stuff in 64 pages, and I congratulate you on your effort,” he wrote. "Nicely done.”

Claytor's childhood love of comics ebbed as he became a teenager, and he went about a decade without reading any.

That changed in his senior year at the University of California - Santa Barbara, when a friend asked if he could get a ride to the comic book store. His passion for comics sparked again as he thumbed through the shop's offerings.

The summer after graduating from college, he scored one of two internship spots with Marvel Entertainment in New York City. The other spot went to the son of movie director Ang Lee, who adapted "The Hulk" into a film in 2003. This was before Marvel superhero movies became the juggernaut they are today.

"I came away from that summer just ready to make my own work, up until that point I had not produced my own comics before. I hit the ground running."

For his first comics project — "And Then One Day," first published in 2004 — he took an autobiographical approach beginning with a page-a-day view of his life.

"Some were humorous, some were somber, some were sad, it depended on what happened that day."

It wouldn't be the last time he published comics about his own life.

When Claytor and his wife, Candace, got married, he wrote and illustrated a comic book about their courtship, "Better Together."

It began with her helping him rescue comics from a soggy storage closet half an hour prior to their first date and ended at the altar.

Claytor also published a book stemming from a drawing project with his then-four-year-old son Owen.

Claytor would outline letters as well as pictures of race cars and rocket ships while Owen doodled. They'd then swap papers, with Owen tracing his dad's outlines and Claytor finishing his son's drawing.

Looking back on his first project, Claytor is mostly amazed at how much writing and drawing he managed.

"I think, my God, I was producing three pages a week," he said. "I don’t know where I found the time."

Contact RJ Wolcott at (517) 377-1026 or rwolcott@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @wolcottr.