Released in 1999 through Oni Press, Grrl Scouts was Mahfood's first mini-series starring the trio of weed-dealing, ass-kicking women that make up the cast, Rita, Daphne and Gwen.
Mahfood starts with their day-to-day life of dealing drugs, partying, and beating the crap out of anyone who gives them any static. Very quickly, Mahfood pits them against a mysterious cabal called the Brotherhood of the Cracker, whose membership includes a high-ranking Catholic Church official and Phillip Nykee, major shoe company CEO. The grrls are soon on the run, before teaming up with Rita's not-seen-in-years father for an all-out attack on the Nykee Corporation. Much killing of anonymous men in dark suits follows.
Prior to this, Mahfood had drawn a couple of comics set in Kevin Smith's Clerks universe, and this shares a certain tone with that. The casual drug use (and humor around it), the frequent use of profanity (and the humor around it), the periodic rants by characters which really feel like the author airing grievances (in this case, about Saturday morning cartoons being replaced by live-action teen-oriented shit like Saved by the Bell). If you include Dogma, we could add the ancient conspiracy element and the presence of the supernatural, since Nykee appears to be more than human.
Which is fine by me, I generally enjoy ranting, cursing, and at least sometimes, watching other people get high. It does date the book a bit, makes it feel of a particular era. How much of an issue that is probably depends on the individual.
Mahfood tends towards straightforward page layouts, other than he occasionally has rows of panels run across two pages instead of just one. He's really fond of drawing people pointing guns directly at the reader for some reason, so that we're looking right down the barrel, or like it's coming off the page. I would think that was meant to be unsettling and possibly make the reader consider the violence in the book, but the characters themselves are pretty cavalier about killing people, so maybe not. Maybe he just did it because he could.
He varies the thickness of his linework effectively, messes with perspective and the level of detail as needed. A character's eyes can be extremely detailed from the make-up, eyelashes and bags under the eyes, or they can just be little round circles, depending on what seems to work. Daphne is usually the one exaggerated most, typically for comic effect. It helps get across her more erratic personality. Mahfood also tends to drench the adults (either Nykee and his guys or Rita's father and his guys) in shadows. Half their face obscured, sometimes against a featureless black background. The Grrls rarely get that treatment. Despite everything they get up to, they remain cleanly visible throughout.
Next week, the Grrl Scouts try to go straight.
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