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Crock, 1/2/20

As a Buffalo native, it’s a constant source of both amusement and mild irritation to discover that many, many people don’t know that Buffalo wings are called that because they were first invented at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, a mere 15-minute walk from where my father lives today! Very few people are so misguided as to make the Jessica Simpson-esque mistake of believing they’re actually made from buffalo (the animal), but lots of folks seem to think that the particular type of sauce we associate with Buffalo wings got that name because of some vague association between the power of a rampaging buffalo and the power of, uh, spiciness?

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is: good job, today’s Crock, for getting this basic fact correct. However, that isn’t going to distract me from pointing out all the other problems with this comic, which include, but are not limited to:

• I think the strip’s structure encourages us to read more into the implied metaphor than it can actually support. I guess it’s supposed to mean “Grossie can’t cook, so having Grossie pack my lunch sucks, just like being a chicken born in Buffalo sucks,” but my brain keeps wanting to make it about how she’s, like, fattening him up so she can cook him or something.
• Thanks to the supply chains of modern agriculture, most chickens are born, raised, and slaughtered thousands of miles away from where their remains will eventually be cooked and eaten, and Western New York has no real poultry industry. A chicken born in Buffalo is in fact more likely to live in some hipster’s backyard coop where it will happily live out a relatively long life providing eggs than to end up as wings.
• Buffalo wings have in fact become a staple of bar food across the United States, and so honestly the whole geography question has very little do with it. The plain fact is that the huge majority of chickens born in the world are destined for slaughter, which quite honestly ought to put the whole business of the bologna sandwiches your wife packs for you being subpar in perspective.
• This isn’t directly pertinent to the joke per se, but it’s well established that Maggot digs latrine pits for a living, right? And that’s what he’s standing in, eating his lunch? He’s up to his waist in a latrine pit? Pretty unpleasant, in my opinion.

Anyway, here’s a last Buffalo wing fun fact for you: in Buffalo, we just call them “wings” or “chicken wings”! Interesting, huh?

Six Chix, 1/2/20

I’m excited to see all six of the chix offer their own takes on the Chicken Little mythos one by one, and I gotta say that while I don’t on any level like this joke, I at least recognize that it more or less is a joke, which gives it a leg up on whatever it is that’s going on here. Might we get to a laugh-provoking Chicken-Little-themed punchline by the end of 2020? Dare to dream!

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Mary Worth, 12/9/19

Say what you will about this “Wilbur & Estelle & Zak & Iris” storyline, but it keeps zagging when I expect it to zig, by which I mean I never in a million years would’ve guessed that Wilbur and Zak, both heartbroken because their ladyfriends dumped them for wholly baffling reasons (because they’re public embarrassments with serious alcohol problems who aren’t over their ex and menopause, respectively), would end up bellying up to Santa Royale’s one vaguely seedy bar together and engaging in some good old fashioned male bonding. Anyway, Zak is nursing what’s presumably a local craft beer and Wilbur’s obviously on day twelve of a scotch bender, so Wilbur having what’s Zak’s having will actually sober him up a bit, hopefully keeping him coherent enough so we hear every detail of the restraining order Estelle got against him post-boombox incident. “The Charterstone laundry room is less than 150 yards from her apartment so I haven’t been able to wash any of my clothes for weeks, Zak. Weeks!”

Gil Thorp, 12/9/19

Welp, we’ve wrapped up the Chance Macy/Chet Ballard/Charlie Roh story, and, uh, it seems the football team is not headed for the playdowns, despite the revival of the bonfire this year, because we’ve just rolled right into the winter storyline, which seems to be about … a girl named Alexa, like the popular electronic assistant from Amazon, and all the other kids are making jokes about it? This seems fairly realistic, as teens are generally pretty shitty and also much less funny than they think they are, but I’m not sure it’s actually that great a basis for a months-long comics plot.

Dick Tracy, 12/9/19

You know what is a great basis for a months-long comics plot? A washed-up narcissistic old actor, whose enormous office is decorated with larger-than-life posters of himself, following up his successful production of Our Town with a wildly ill-conceived plan for stage version of Metropolis starring a woman transformed via alien DNA. This is a million times better than Steve Roper and Mike Nomad tracking down rogue carnies or whatever.

Crock, 12/9/19

I’ve always understood “entertainment center” to mean a big piece of furniture that has spots for your TV, DVD player, stereo, etc., which more or less went out of fashion when flatscreen TVs came onto the scene in the mid-to-late ’00s, and never would’ve been much of a gift item anyway. But I guess I’m overthinking this strip, where the punchline is that the real entertainment center is an old man’s dick.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/5/19

Ah, finally, the reason Silas wears a red armband makes sense: He’s a socialist, here to spread the word that the factotums of electoral democracy are in fact enslaved to capital. And if you’re wondering “why is a socialist the only person in Hootin’ Holler who runs a store,” it sounds like you’re unfamiliar with Marxist theory, which insists that a civilization must pass through all phases of economic development before it can achieve a truely classless society. Silas isn’t going to try dragging this barter-based agricultural community straight into the dictatorship of the proletariat like some kind of common Maoist!

Crock, 11/5/19

I’m just gonna ignore the “what if telemarketers, but in an ill-defined North African setting, where incidentally we’ve previously acknowledged that phones exist” joke here and focus instead on Maggot’s bib. Does it make any sense at all to wear a bib when you aren’t wearing a shirt? If you’re living in a tent in the desert with no running water to wash the food off your chest, maybe? I guess we should really factor in the fact that the bib matches Maggot’s skin color so precisely that it’s almost certainly made from the flesh of a member of his immediate family.

Mary Worth, 11/5/19

The best part about today’s episode of Wilbur’s Drunken Double Date Meltdown is Zak’s genuine smile in panel two. Not only is he (unsurprisingly) not even remotely threatened by Wilbur, but he’s enjoying this is as much as we are!