On some level, it seems a tad, well, cheesy, to review a comic series called “Milk and Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad” when all we’ve been doing the past week is eating copious amounts of holiday food. But this hefty hardcover volume from Dark Horse, containing nearly every strip in the series created by author and artist Evan Dorkin between 1989 to 2010, is hard to pass up, like the delicious leftovers that are currently sitting pretty in your fridge.

The premise of this series is pretty ridiculous, but hilariously so: the eponymous Milk and Cheese are, quite literally, “dairy products gone bad.” They drink a lot and get into improbably violent situations. The dynamic duo have obviously been around for a while—as long as I have, actually—although I had never heard of them before this review. The comprehensive nature of this collection, however, allows new readers to pick up the comics without requiring any background knowledge.

The uninitiated will learn from the very first page that Milk and Cheese “are from New Jersey” (and they’re “sensitive about it”), that “they’re secure in their respective social and political belief systems”—mostly, they go on rampages yelling “HATE YOU!” Their idea of a good time involves, among other things, William Shatner’s rendition of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and Maury Povich’s talk show “A Current Affair.”

The tail-end of the eighties are still recent enough that the references don’t seem too dated, and they are referred back to more than once: after wreaking havoc in a supermarket, Milk and Cheese make a “quick stop back home for ‘A Current Affair.’” They are the epitome of domestic bliss as they stare at the television, at least until the show is over, when they flip through the phone book and pick a random victim. And then it starts all over again. Incidentally, when they are meek and cute, they remind me aesthetically of AnthroPCs Pintsize and Winston from the webcomic “Questionable Content.”

Once your comic’s premise is “dairy products gone bad,” you are pretty free to make all the puns you want, and Dorkin milks this for all it’s worth: barred from entering a hotel (yes, just go with it), an indignant Milk pipes up on behalf of his buddy: “Whaddaya mean we can’t come in! It says here you serve fine cheeses.” Dorkin seems to poke fun at the fact that his light-hearted comic has been elevated to such status as well: “This book is for Sarah and Emily, and against everyone else,” he writes in his dedication. In a standalone panel titled, “How to Draw Milk and Cheese,” he jokingly demystifies his creative process: “Step 1: Draw a Monopoly house and a postage stamp. Step 2: Put faces on them.”

Enjoy too much “Milk and Cheese” in one go, and you might be left feeling sick, or at least uncomfortably full. These comics are, in their unique way, quite smart, but they are also outrageous, not particularly deep, and certainly not subtle—to put it bluntly, these may not be the comics of choice for sensitive, brooding hipsters (for that delegation I recommend the “Phonogram” series, from Image Comics). The lack of subtlety stems in large part from the art as well, which is frantic and cluttered; the frames are bursting at the seams. The visuals are slightly easier on the eyes in Chapter Six where the strips are presented “in glorious color,” but are still quite overwhelming.

For the casual reader, this is a decent volume you can leave on your desk, the type you can pick up and read a few pages when you need a break from writing essays. At least you can say you’re reading instead of idling away on YouTube when someone calls you out for procrastinating. Messrs. Milk and Cheese would surely approve.