1008: Suckville

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Suckville

Title text: Suckville is considered by the Census Bureau to be part of the Detroit metropolitan statistical area, despite not being located anywhere near Detroit.

Explanation

Megan and Cueball are playing a card game (possibly Dominion) and Megan whips a common insult, a play on the word "suck" that adds a typical city name suffix to the end of it. Other variations are: "Losercity", "Lameville", etc.

The phrase is originally based on the ubiquitous signage you see along American roads that say "Welcome to Town X — Population Y".

Then, since Cueball one-ups Megan by indicating there is a city by that name, she can only resign herself to the fact that her smack talk did not work. Since Cueball knows where Suckville can be found in the census data, it's likely that he has received this insult in the past (maybe even from Megan) and searched through the census data to prepare a comeback for this time.

The title text informs the reader that Suckville is classified as part of the Detroit area despite not being located there. Detroit, of course, is the quintessential example of a city so run down, it might as well really be named "Suckville", or include a district of that name. In fact, the city only recently (2013) declared itself bankrupt. (Fun fact: looking in the US Census Suckville is "corrected" to Saukville, Wisconsin, which is indeed not particularly close to Detroit, Michigan. However the population of Saukville in the 2010 census is given as 4451 for the village, and 1755 for the surrounding town municipality.)

Transcript

[Megan is kneeling on the floor, playing a card game.]

Megan: Hah!

Megan: Welcome to Suckville–population: You.

[In a frame-less panel, Cueball is sitting on the floor opposite her, also playing the game.]

Cueball: Why are you using 2000 census data?

Cueball: That's an old figure.

[Megan turns around from the game to look at her laptop, which is sitting on the floor behind her.]

Megan: I couldn't find Suckville in the 2010 census.

Cueball: Huh? It's right there in SF-1 table P1.

Megan: Oh. So it is.

[Megan turns back to Cueball, who is looking at his cards.]

Megan: Well, then.

Megan: Welcome to Suckville–population: 83.

Cueball: Much better.

Trivia

• Megan appears to have 3 arms and 4 legs in the third panel. This may indicate a movement between the cards and the laptop or just a drawing error.

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Discussion

Wait, how did Megan's smack talk not work, as the explanation states? This is not accurate. 108.162.238.172 20:34, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Cueball changed the statement from an insult to a statement of fact, implying that in the year 2000, he was literally the only resident of a real town called Suckville, but that the population has grown since then. Leafy Greens (talk) 01:05, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

In panel 3 what is going on with Megan's legs? 141.101.99.85 15:12, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I have no idea... Maybe she temporarily turned into a spider? --Pudder (talk) 15:42, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I think she was just turning around. if you look closely you can see that in one position legs are in a position which would make sense while playing the game. Her other two legs are faced with a computer as if she was using it. Same with her arms. The reason there were three is because one arm stayed in the same position. 108.162.245.82 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

More likely, he forgot to erase her legs facing forwards. Beanie (talk) 11:00, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

If Randall respected disposition of cards, it can't be magic the gathering 108.162.229.112 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

in MTG, there is one deck with many cards in it (usually 60, in EDH it's 100, and can be arbitrarily large), with one other stack that can grow tall (the graveyard), with maybe exile becoming somewhat larger. However, this comic shows multiple large stacks per player, which means it can't be MTG.

Adding a late comment to the discussion - it seems nobody caught the fact that Cueball has obviously looked up Suckville in the census data because he knew in which table it could be found. This indicates to me that he has received this insult before and looked it up in the census data in order to prepare a comeback for the next time! He was ready for Megan this time! Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 12:54, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Clearly Dominions or an inspired game. Megan is taking a card from a set of ten piles reminiscent of the ten piles of kingdom cards, and both players have what appears to be a deck and a discard pile.

The game could be speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_(card_game)