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Text by Rob Simas // images by Food One

Peanut butter sandwiches, a nymphomaniac girlfriend, bloodshed, lesbian sex scenes and evil Eskimos—just a small portion of Jim Mahfood’s fantastical imagination

Two publishers pretty much dominate the comic book game and Marvel is one of them. X-Men, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Fantastic Four, Captain America, the Avengers, are all characters with significant cultural force—even if you’re someone who doesn’t generally partake in the genre, there’s no denying. For a kid who spent time holed up in his bedroom (“obsessed with Spidey…a comic book junkie”), and who likes to draw, scoring a gig at Marvel is like becoming a made man. It’s how Jim Mahfood (aka Food One) made his mark in ’97: doing an X-Men book called Generation X Underground. And then it all just started to happen. Later that year, he scored a gig drawing Kevin Smith’s Clerks comic. In between those two gigs, while living in AZ, he linked up with Z-Trip, Emile and Radar, doing live art at their Thursday night weekly, Mission Control, from the Bomb Shelter days. But that was then—now Jim is writing out the rest of his history in the middle of Hollywood juggling commercial work (like the recent comic-inspired Colt 45 ad campaign), gallery shows (next one is in New York on March 14 at Enve Beauty Lounge, 121 Ludlow Street), working on personal projects like Carl, the Cat That Makes Peanut Butter Sandwiches (which is anything but a G-rated comic), scribing the online autobiographical adventure Los Angeles Ink Stains and a bunch of other stuff when he has the time and motivation—like painting on the girl you see in this photo, which he did exclusively for BPM. For all up-to-date info use foodoneart.blogspot.com and 40ozcomics as your jumping off points.

How’s life been treating you since moving to LA? I really dig it here. The key thing I’ve learned is that you have to have a dope crew of amazing people out here—a support system of real, honest, talented friends and peers. That’s what makes LA for me. The art scene is off the hook. I get to do things that I wouldn’t be able to do anywhere else. The downside is there’s some posers and some fake people out here; sometimes people are shady or passive-aggressive and you don’t know where they’re coming from. But I’m not going to let them spoil my fun.

Off the hook? I like that there’s lots of diversity out here in the art scene. And most artists are accepting and respectful of that. I haven’t really encountered any egos or attitude out here from other artists. It’s more of a community vibe, like, everyone wants to do dope shit and just make cool things and have good gallery openings and parties and stuff. I know artists from the comic books scene, the graf scene, the lowbrow street art scene, the photography scene, the vinyl toy scene; it’s all sort of interconnected out here. I like that. There’s so much stuff popping off here that there are probably tons of rad places I don’t even know about yet.

Tell me about a good Hollywood moment. My first real Hollywood moment was in 1998. The Clerks comic just came out and I came to LA for the first time to do a signing with Kevin Smith at the Golden Apple on Melrose. There was a line of fans down the block. It was amazing. Everyone was there for Kevin, of course, but to be part of that was a huge deal for me. After the signing, Kevin, Bob Schreck and I went back to chill at Kev’s hotel room. Schreck and I were scarfing down some food when there was a knock at the door. In walks Chris Rock. I couldn’t believe it! It was pretty surreal. He was there to go over the script for Dogma with Kev. Bob and I said our hellos to him and then we immediately had to bail to catch a plane to San Jose to go to a comic book convention out there. That was the beginning of the whole promotional circuit for the Clerks comic book. 1998 was off the hook, man.

How did the Kevin Smith Clerks comic come about? I met Kevin in ’97 at San Diego Comic-Con. This famous comic book editor named Bob Schreck had just formed a new company called Oni Press and they were going to publish Kevin’s comics. They were looking for an artist to draw the Clerks book at that show. I showed them my work, and it was just perfect timing, right place right time kinda thing. It helped launch my career in a huge way. But here’s the crazy shit. I first showed my work to Bob at a convention two years before, when he was an editor at Dark Horse Comics. He rejected me. He told me my work wasn’t good and I wasn’t ready for the big leagues. Ha ha. So, I walked away cursing his name. I hated him for that. Then, in ’97, at San Diego Comic-Con, I showed my work to an editor from Dark Horse named Jamie Rich. He told me to go show it to the guys at this new company called Oni Press. So I go over there and Schreck is standing there, and I’m thinking he’s going to tear me apart again. I hand him my art and says to me, “So, you’re that Mahfood kid that I’ve been hearing so much about.” He’s been one of my closest friends ever since.

How, if at all, was working on that project different than other jobs? I had never worked with a writer before. I always wrote and drew my own stuff. So Kevin’s script was the first ever script I worked from. It was really challenging, but I just threw all my effort and energy into it and tried to do my best. The pressure was on…I knew a lot of people were going to pick up that book.

Does commercial work ever get you excited—other than for monetary reasons? Yeah. The Colt 45 ad campaign was fun and exciting, especially after I found out my art was going to be on billboards and on beer cans and stuff. That was amazing.

A billboard, that’s rad. It was really mind-blowing. I had never seen my work that big before. The coolest thing that happened is when the billboard by the Henry Fonda went up, my little brother Dan (DJ Mahf) was in town and we were partying at Crane’s together. Someone told us about it, and we drunkenly ran over there, and I got to see it for the first time with my little brother.

Drunk on Colt 45, right? Ha ha, yeah, hell yeah. It was all full circle. In 1993, when I got to art school, me and my homie Mike Huddleston formed our comic book studio and we called it 40oz Comics. We would sit around all night and drink 40s, ’cause they were cheap and we were poor, and we would draw comics. Then, cut to 2007, and I’m doing art for one of the brands that I used to drink while doing this shit.

Was your mom like, “sweet, beer…send me a 40 kiddo,” or “oh great, my son’s peddling the devil’s juice”? She’s totally supportive of all my stuff. Remember, I’m from St. Louis, which is a big beer-drinkin’ town. They don’t fuck around there. Anheuser-Busch owns that whole city, man. My whole family parties. My mom is Irish and my dad is Lebanese. Those are two angry, drunken ethnic backgrounds. But there’s certain things I won’t send home. I won’t send her the Carl comic book. No way. She doesn’t really dig the naked girl stuff or the stuff with drug references, but I think she gets where I’m coming from. She likes the big, crazy, colorful painted stuff. The loud stuff.

Talk to me about Carl, the Cat that Makes Peanut Butter Sandwiches. That’s my brand new comic book that we just premiered at Comic-Con in NY. My friends from Nerdcore published it. It’s a full-color, one-shot book starring this little cat named Carl, who makes the greatest peanut butter sandwiches in the world. He has a hot, nymphomaniac girlfriend named Yuki and a bunch of crazy shit goes down with his business being ruined by evil Eskimos and he has to go to the North Pole to kick their asses. The book basically turns into a revenge story, complete with over-the-top bloodshed, lesbian sex scenes, and lots of surprises. It was probably the most fun I ever had working on a comic.

Most fun why? My best work, my funnest work, is when I am free to just totally cut loose, not give a shit what people think, and do my own thing. And it’s all me: writing it, doing the art, the lettering, all of it. When editors and art directors get involved, that’s when things get watered-down or filtered in certain ways. You lose some of the fun. But the dudes at Nerdcore just told me to write and draw whatever the hell I wanted and they would publish it. I love that. That’s my favorite thing to hear as a creator.

Are you Carl in real life? Artists injecting a bit of themselves into a character isn’t crazy talk. Maybe just a little bit. The main thing in common between Carl and I is that we take our work very seriously. I don’t take much else in life that seriously, but when it comes to my art I don’t fuck around. Carl is the same way; he takes his role as the greatest peanut butter sandwich-maker as a huge honor and responsibility.

Los Angeles Ink Stains is an autobiographical adventure, right? Yes. I decided to do a new, ongoing autobio strip that people could read for free on my blog. It’s a really fun and therapeutic thing to do. Everyone should write and draw about their lives. All my friends are in it and the public reaction to it has been amazingly positive. I’ve probably gotten more emails and letters about it than anything else I’ve ever done.

Why do you think you’ve gotten the reaction you have? There are certain things that all people everywhere can relate to. Love, happiness, pain, sorrow, triumph, relationship problems, eating good food, partying with friends, music, art, traveling, insecurities, dreams, hope, technology, self-image, losing friends and loved ones—these are all things that I’ve injected into the strip that people have reacted strongly to. If you can connect on a common level with people across the board like that, I think that’s what good art is all about at the end of the day.

Is it like an actual journal for you; do you go home at the end of the day and draw the details? It comes when I feel inspired. I can’t record or report on everything that happens. It’s usually the highlights of the week or whatever. Sometimes one strip is the combination of two or more days. It’s basically the most interesting, weird, happy, sad, and funny things that happen over the course of two or three days.

So the end isn’t written? No. The end comes when I die.

How do you hope it ends? With a laugh. There is enough darkness and horrible shit in this world, and in the end I really just want to put a smile on people’s faces with my work and hopefully make them laugh. That’s the best reaction I could hope for, to inject a bit of fun and light into other people’s lives for a quick moment.

How do you think the last strip might look? A can of spray paint in one hand, a bottle of scotch in the other, and James Brown fucking blasting in the background.

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