YOUNGSTOWN — Jim Gaffigan is the kind of comedian who sells tickets on the road and gets great ratings for his comedy specials.

He’s not the kind of comedian who makes headlines.

That changed last August when he went on an epic Twitter rant about the former occupant of the White House.

Fans of Gaffigan (Gaffers? Gaffifans? An all-female fan club on the South Side of Chicago called the Pale Hoes?) needn’t worry their favorite comedian is turning into Lewis Black or Jon Stewart.

For his set of all-new material Friday at the Covelli Centre, Gaffigan revisited many familiar topics — marriage, parenthood, his appearance, his discomfort in social situations — only this time they often were filtered through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gaffigan talked about news anchors and experts who talk in code, using words like “comorbidity,” which essentially meant, “Fat people are gonna die.” Even when he figured that out, it only improved his eating habits for about a week.

“Turns out life and death is not the motivation you think,” he said.

Quarantining together and other COVID-19 challenges are sure to turn up in many performers’ acts in the coming months. By adapting those topics to his on-stage persona, Gaffigan gave a distinctive spin to material that could feel overly familiar in lesser hands.

Still, Gaffigan was at his best when he mined topics that felt unique to him, like the insanity of the popularity of beer-can collecting in the ’70s, particularly among children at least a decade too young to drink.

Born in Illinois and raised in Indiana, Gaffigan bonded with the Rust Belt crowd, saying the only difference between the Bible Belt and the Rust Belt is, “Instead of religion, we have unemployment.”

He found humor in bikers, cyclists and golfers. He took shots at his own faith, Catholicism and several others, and he expressed surprise that more Americans aren’t Buddhists because Buddha looks like a lot of Americans.

There were jabs at anti-vaxxers and QAnon theories, but Gaffigan didn’t dwell on any topic too long. If one subject left an audience member squirming, the next bit more than likely had them back on his side.

Opening act Todd Glass is a funny guy and got his biggest laugh quickly recapping his brief set for late-arriving audience members in the front row. However, the expiration date on Shamwow jokes has to have been a decade ago.

Gaffigan did just over an hour. The set didn’t have any lulls, but it didn’t have as many big laughs as his best standup specials. It will be fun to see how he tweaks and refines what the crowd saw Friday for what will inevitably be his next special.