After Work Sucks, there wasn't another Grrl Scouts mini-series for 14 years. Grrl Scouts: Magic Socks is, unfortunately, my least favorite of the four stories, so it didn't maintain its place in my collection. I don't care about extended Hunter S. Thompson riffs, and Mahfood was in some kind of transition period with his art, and I didn't like the results.
By late 2021-early 2022's Stone Ghost, however, he'd settled into a style I liked a lot better. His work is this strange mix of the characters tending to be fairly simple designs, while the backgrounds and surroundings are a wild mix of details. Dio's (the one in the lower left) face is usually a basic circle with a couple of smaller circles for eyes, two dots for nostrils, some basic shape for a mouth. Her pal Gordi is like a cartoon jellyfish with a derby hat. Mistress Tako is a blood-red cloak with white slits for eyes and mouth surrounded by shadows.
At the same time, the backgrounds are littered with weird stuff. Wires or smoke or random bullets just hovering there. Swirling monstrosities in a void when any notion of distinct panels seems to have been thrown out entirely. It actually makes me a bit nostalgic, because it reminds me of when I would just draw random shit all over my folders in school. Tanks, cubes, lightning bolts, ninja turtle weapons, Velociraptor pupils. Other times, it makes me think of graffiti or wall mural art. Big and wild and just trying to express something.
This is the first mini-series that doesn't take place in Freak City or involve Daphne, Gwen and Rita. In fact, it doesn't even take place on Earth. It revolves around Dio's quest to retrieve her boyfriend's ashes, which he hocked to a loan shark to protect Dio from the debt he'd racked up. Unfortunately, Dio is tied to an ancient lineage and so there are forces out to stop her. Dio initially hires a bodyguard named Turtleneck Jones, but he's soon replaced by his partner of sorts, the cyborg Natas. Where Jones is a gruff, mulleted hardass type, Natas is a big, goofy killing machine who regards the whole thing as a fun adventure are distracts people by asking if they're interested in subscriptions to Cereal Aficionado Magazine.
I can't tell why exactly Mahfood makes the particular choices he does, but I like the sense that he's just going with whatever he feels works at the moment. It fits with the surrealist feel of the story, where anything can happen at any moment. A cyborg can emerge from someone's skull. A guy with a kettle for a head can be taken seriously as a threat. Jumping into someone's dreams is entirely viable. A young couple unites because one makes a ceramic codpiece for the other.
What holds it together is that the story remains focused on Dio and her love for Billy. That's what drives her forward in spite of everything, and it's the relatable core of trying to process losing someone important that gives the story just enough grounding to not feel weightless among all the weird shit. Every issue has a flashback to some part of Dio and Billy's relationship, all of which Mahfood draws as a bunch of little panels done on pages of a yellow legal pad. Like a story someone might doodle during an especially dull meeting. It gives the reader a sense of the relationship the two had, that Billy was goofy and silly, and more than a little self-destructive, while Dio was the more tentative, responsible one. This whole thing is Dio embracing her the bolder, more confrontational part of herself. The part that helped her meet him in the first place, which helps her to move forward.
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