GRAND PRAIRIE – Jeff Dunham's rare and exquisite comedy arrives at an unusual time. He's one of three ventriloquists, all from Dallas, who have only recently invaded the national consciousness. But the three are as different as any trio of puppets in Mr. Dunham's well-traveled suitcase of surprise.

Terry Fator, who recently won $1 million on NBC's America's Got Talent, is a singer par excellence, a Michael Bublé who somehow hits the high notes without moving his lips. Jay Johnson, who, like Mr. Dunham, graduated from Richardson High School, is a consummate storyteller, sharing with the audience the bizarre history of ventriloquism as though he's Alistair Cooke on Masterpiece Theatre.

Mr. Dunham's mark of distinction is that he's easily one of the funniest stand-up comics alive. He pulls it off while playing straight man to a rowdy stable of hand-held insult artists, who revel in raunchy, politically incorrect one-liners, from the purple Peanut to Walter the curmudgeon to Bubba Jay, the redneck.

Achmed the Dead Terrorist is all bug eyes and bones; his favorite expression is "I kill you." Some of what he says makes people uneasy, but the enthusiastic sold-out crowd who cheered Mr. Dunham's every punch line here Saturday night at Nokia Theatre especially loved the put-downs of "the enemy" that Achmed represents.

Pulling comedy from a crowd's anxiety is nothing new. Charlie Chaplin and Mel Brooks even used Hitler as a comic foil. But Mr. Dunham apologized to his mom, who, with his dad, came to the show Saturday night. Achmed, it appears, is not her favorite.

"I kill you," he says repeatedly. And he does – with laughs.

What separates Mr. Dunham from many comics and most ventriloquists is that he's a master improviser. So beware of sitting too near the stage. Pity the poor sap in the front row, the bald "Chad," who made the mistake of getting up early to get a beer. He was made fun of the rest of the night, and the crowd ate it up.

Walter, the geezer puppet, loved gazing out at the Grand Prairie crowd and saying, "Stupid Jessica," referring to the Hollywood girlfriend of Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. "Just this once, couldn't she have had a headache?"

Mr. Dunham has become so popular – Achmed alone has drawn 26 million views on YouTube.com – that his adoring fans know most of the lines even before his characters say them.

But what makes Mr. Dunham so different from the current crop of ventriloquists is his clever comedic skill. Chad will never again sip a beer without thinking of Saturday night, and "porno chick," another hapless soul serving as a target in the front row, won't either.

For her and Chad, Achmed lived up to his mantra – "I kill you," with a new weapon known as a belly laugh, which feels strangely therapeutic when one is hit with it over and over.