Get Out The Hot Sauce Because Here Comes Chicken Wing Man

What’s better? Pizza or chicken wings? If you’re Chicken Wing Man, you probably know which side of the battle he falls on. The same goes for the nefarious Pizza Pete. Although, with the villain being a literal piece of pizza, there are certainly a number of questions as to how all this works.

Chicken Wing Man is a pun-filled comic starring an unlikely super hero. It’s also set in a world with talking food. You have to wonder if all food is sentient or select kinds and if they’re offended that people are eating what would be their brothers and sisters. While this is a big question mark, you just kind of go with it for this series.
We don’t get into an origin story for Chicken Wing Man in the first two issues. Writers Randy Heflin and Jake Keller jump right into the action with our hero being called to duty. He’s far from Buffalo so he has to try planes, trains, and automobiles to get there. Why the city depends on a hero who’s so far out in the country is anyone’s guess, but again, you just kind of going with it.

The first issue gives us the lay of the land and the second is where things really get going, especially with Pizza Pete. His master plan is revealed and it’s pretty funny in the scheme of things. I mean, it’s absolutely ridiculous, but that fits in with the overall tone of Chicken Wing Man. There’s a great sequence in the second chapter where the two rivals are building their plans separately. Each image shows how organized one is and disorganized the other is. You can guess which is which.
Artist Riana Dorsey gives Chicken Wing Man a cartoony flair which certainly matches up with the overall tone of the story. We’re dealing with a grown man in a chicken suit and a talking pizza, not to mention a corndog police chief. It would be very creepy if these images were hyper-realistic and super detailed.

Dorsey plays up the criminal aspect of the story, using shadows to show when something wrong is happening. This contrasts with the bright nature of the rest of the story as Chicken Wing Man flops onto the scene in a burst of energy and feathers.
One of my favorite aspects of Chicken Wing Man is the sound effects. There’s a great one towards the end of the second issue where the hero bursts through a door with a sound of “Crash (a-doodle-doo)” which is just plain silly and absolutely hilarious.

You are not going to get a brooding story of self-reflection in a comic like Chicken Wing Man. What you get instead is a book that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It pokes fun at tropes of the super hero genre and procedural police shows all while delivering a number of puns and silly gags. It’s a refreshing read after digging through the doom and gloom of reality or even some of the other super hero comics out there.
Chicken Wing Man from Guys With Ties Comics is currently available digitally through ComiXology.