I'm a live and let live kind of guy by nature. Jim Mahfood is clearly not, as Stupid Comics is largely a series of illustrated rants about the ills of our culture (and our pop culture). The targets tend to be fairly obvious, and the observations not always as fresh as they were when the strips were first printed, but they are generally very funny and all have terrific artwork. Stupid Comics compares well with Dork!, or with the sort of pop culture comics Bendis used to do, leaning more towards the cynicism and anger of the former.
Oddly enough, I find myself on the opposite side of many of the things Mahfood is against, but I'm still taken in by the passion he has for his arguments. For example, the illustration of the KRS-One "Beef" song is evocative and powerful, even though I am a die-hard meat eater who doesn't agree with a good 90% of the message. And I can't quite work up the enthusiasm to be upset over reality TV, the downfall of MTV or people loving gadgets like organizers and cell phones, either, although Mahfood's strips on the subjects are pretty funny.
I'm more entertained by Stupid Comics when it's less a rant about society and more a running commentary between two people. Easily my favorite strips in this collection are the "Being Raised Catholic" strip that shows a real understanding of how people talk and has some fun observations about religion as well, or the conflict between optimism and negativity that is personified in "Sunshine Sally and Gloomy Greg." As always, I also have a fondness for the autobiographical, such as Mahfood's one pager on the appreciation of jazz.
What really gets me on just about every page of Stupid Comics, though, is the artwork. I love Mahfood's style, which can appear to be sloppy and sketchy on first glance, but reveals more about the work that went into it with further looks. He crowds his panels with details and background jokes, and you need only to look at his pin-up pages to see strong shadows and blacks, plus detailed clothing, hairstyles and faces. I also enjoy Mahfood's lettering, which often dominates the pages and works as art by itself. The rant about MTV comes across as a run-on spew of furious anger, because the words just flow down the page, nonstop, drowning out everything else.
Stupid Comics is sort of the comics equivalent of coffee shop beat poetry and jazz, a freeform exercise in self-expression that is as much catharsis for the artist as it is entertainment for the audience.
