40 oz. Collection

by Jim Mahfood

40oz Comics, for the first time in one handsome collection! Hot indy artist Jim Mahfood (Clerks, Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Grrl Scouts: Work Sucks) brings you this collection of his underground 40oz mini-comics. Featuring short stories starring Mahfood's most popular characters: the Grrl Scouts, Zombie Kid, Rocket Boy, and that lovable minister of funk, Smoke Dog! All the mini-comics are printed here in their entirety, and we've thrown in 20 pages of bonus material! This collection also features pin-ups and guest art from Andi Watson, Scott Morse, Mike Huddleston, and Steve Willaredt.

Genres: Comics

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 6, 2003

About the author

Jim Mahfood, a.k.a. Food One, is an American comic book creator.

Reviews

[Matt Graupman · Rating 3 out of 5]

There isn't a cooler mofo in all of comics than Jim Mahfood. Now he's the paint-slingin' messiah of so-called "visual funk" but, back in the early 2000s, he was just another fresh-faced art school graduate searching for his voice. Like a lot of outsider artists, Mahfood discovered zine-making and started putting out hot little mini-comics of graffiti-inspired cartoon lunacy under the title "40 Oz. Comics." "40 Oz. Collected" reprints the first four (and a half) issues of his series, allowing the reader to witness his evolution as an artist, storyteller, and all-around dope dude.

Jim Mahfood's work first came to my attention when he did the "Generation X Underground Special" for Marvel, and a lot of these mini-comics come from that same era. His style was very animated and angular at the time, drawing heavily from hip-hop as well as comix. Every character - even the background ones - look like the coolest cats at the club, though they might be a little on the hipster-y side by today's standards. Unfortunately, Mahfood's writing hadn't quite caught up to his art at this early stage in his career. While he obviously had a knack for creating memorable characters (Zombie Kid, Rocket Boy, Smoke Dog) from early on, his stories just don't match the intensity of the art. Any art school kid would probably put out stories like this, which actually isn't a knock on Mahfood's talent at all: every artist has to start somewhere and Mahfood has worked hard to distance himself from the pack. He deserves every bit of his success.

Mini-comics are the lifeblood of the indie comics scene and, sadly, I fear that one-man anthologies like "40 Oz. Comics" are on the decline (although John Porcellino's "King-Cat Comics" and Noah Van Sciver's "Blammo" are both going strong). A lot of artists can't be bothered with printing and stapling and folding their books, so a lot of mini-comic work has found its way online on blog sites like Tumblr or on personal websites. I think Jim Mahfood will probably always keep it old school, though. I have a hard time imagining the high priest of sloppy, spontaneous, funky art ever working in Photoshop on a Cintiq tablet. He's too cool a mofo for that.

[Gavin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really cool-looking (very punk, kinda funk) but hollow.

[Damon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've really come around on Mahfood's stuff. I was never that into it, but of late I think some of the graffiti-inspired stuff is pretty cool. There's nothing really mindblowing here - this is still pretty early stuff and he hasn't really grown into his more "mature" (?) style yet, but it's a nice little collection of stuff you would be hard pressed to track down elsewhere.

[furious · Rating 5 out of 5]

anything Mahfood is fucking genius. period.