Harris Smith recommends Buffalo Speedway #1 by supermercado
Anyone who’s ever had an underpaid food service or retail job they simultaneously hated and cared about too much will find something to relate to in Yehudi Mercado’s Buffalo Speedway, releasing this week via comiXology Submit. From the often-contentious camaraderie between co-workers to the occasional epiphanies of, “Wait, none of this really matters,” Buffalo Speedway captures perfectly the messy, hormonal intensity of being in your early 20’s and being paid minimum wage to sell records/flip burgers/take tickets at a movie theater, or in this story’s case, deliver pizzas.
Punchy, profane and paced at super-speed, Buffalo Speedway has the fun, inventive feel of a good indie comedy (think “Dazed and Confused” crossed with a touch of “Repo Man”), with a clever visual sense and sharp dialogue. Appropriately, the story takes place in 1994, during the heyday of American independent film (and a year when I was 17 and working three different foodservice jobs while going to high school in Washington, DC), and each issue even includes a suggested era-specific soundtrack (in the first issue, this includes Superchunk, Cypress Hill and Killing Joke). On target in just about every way, Buffalo Speedway calls to mind such 90s classics as Peter Bagge’s Hate and Bob Fingerman’s Minimum Wage in the way it both celebrates and satirizes the disaffected excesses and absurdity of premillennial youth.
[Read Buffalo Speedway #1 Here!]
Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Neagtive Pleasure on Newtown Radio.