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Underground > Comic Books >

Woo, there's a new Grrl Scouts comic out..

14:32 / 10.03.03

er.. yeah.

And I thought we should have a thread on it, just on general principle.

The story's still brilliantly dumb white b-boy wish fulfillment foolishness.

Mahfood still draws the coolest looking comics in living memory.

It features the phrase "what a rule-ass day" and around half a dozen obscure hip-hop refs. per page.

What more do you need to know?

Now let's have an argument featuring completely polarised, unassailable opinions concerning whether Jim Mahfood is a hip as fuck comic book saviour or a mindless stoner oaf..

SecretlyClarkKent

01:13 / 11.03.03

How's this for a 'completely polarised, unassailable opinion': He's both. And that's why I think he works. Or why I enjoy his work.

Technically, why I enjoy his work is still largely a mystery to me. The drug references are just this side of a turn-off for me, and I know little about hip-hop culture. I catch the obscure hip-hop references, realize that they're obscure hip-hop references, and have absolutely no clue what they're referring to. But I keep reading.

I think it's the sense of authenticity. I'll go along and admit that he's a hip as fuck comic saviour, but it's the fact that he's also a mindless stoner oaf that makes it work...

I originally picked up the first trade because the art was cool, and then the owner of my store pointed out that he was from Missouri, USA. St. Louis, to be exact, and I live near St. Louis and spend a great deal of my time there. That was cool, so I picked it up. I've picked up most of his work that I can find. "Stupid Comics" had some good moments, and I'm enjoying the new Grrl Scouts, as well.

My biggest complaint... well, it's not really a complaint so much as something I noticed that maybe slightly irks me: His style changed between the series. I'm totally okay with that happening, except for the part where I think I liked the original art better.

Oh, well. Still good fun.

-Jared

02:24 / 11.03.03

I love Mahfood's art, I think his writing is okay. I love the comics because the art and writing go so well together. I bought that issue of Spiderman he did with Bendis and it just didn't work as well - good writing, great art, but no spark. I buy the latest Grrl Scouts and get knocked flat.

What he does is to me almost a prefect marriage of story w/ art and that's what comics should be.

11:28 / 11.03.03

Yeah, I reckon so.

No star here laces

12:40 / 11.03.03

What does it for me is that the art has the same sense of attitude that the writing has. Which, to bring up the ol chestnut, is because he is a 'cartoonist' or whatever we decided to call someone who writes and draws.

Mahfood has a really strong visual sense of the world he's writing about, so when he's writing someone else's story and someone else's characters, he loses that.

I get all the references, but that isn't what makes it great at all. It's because you can see the body language of the characters and the characters themselves as products of a culture you recognise, but twisted into fantasy. Which means it just looks cool as fuck.

I actually prefer the stuff like zombie kid which gets a bit more fantastical - it's just amusing to take things like zombies and throw 'em into popular culture.

Mahfood is only a comic book saviour in the same way Jhonen Vasquez is, in that ultimately he's a little bit disappointing. Both of them are visual geniuses with a genuinely different aesthetic, but they limit themselves to reflecting particular 'youth' scenes onto the comics medium, which I think is a shame, when they could have a much wider appeal and try to tackle bigger stuff. But being mired in goth and hip hop respectively makes them interesting to certain demographics who might not have read comics before, but is ultimately limiting.