Lio: Happiness Is a Squishy Cephalopod

By Mark Tatulli

LIO is brilliant! In this post-Calvin and Hobbes and post-Far Side world, this is the brass ring for cool!" --Dallas Morning News

* LI O is a pantomime strip featuring a curious young boy whose daydreams embark from reality destined for the dark chasm where wit and sarcasm collide.

Drawn in the age-old style of pantomime strips, LIO offers a decidedly new and edgy twist to the wordless comic format. That's right, LIO is so crafty it doesn't need word balloons, dialogue boxes, or clever captions. Mark Tatulli's cartoon also employs a unique drawing style influenced by cartooning greats Gahan Wilson, Charles Addams, and 19th-century satirist A. J. Volck.

* In describing his strip, Tatulli explains he was eager "to bring something truly different to the comics pages . . . something to appeal to all ages, drawn in pictures only. To tell a story without text, while updating the pantomime concept with a modern audience in mind."

* The result is a mind-bendingly humorous and astute journey into the darkly detailed world of young LiO--where a spit wad can put a school bus out of commission faster than a spider can hamper the efforts of the U.S. Postal Service.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780740793240

Book preview

Reviews for Lio

[thom001_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am not really a fan of comic strips. In fact, I usually don’t even look at them in the daily newspaper, and the color Sunday comic section generally remains in the plastic bag of supplements that it comes in until it gets recycled with the rest of the week’s newsprint.But a friend of mine at work showed me a couple strips of Liō a few months ago, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Liō: Happiness is a Squishy Cephalopod is the first collection of the mostly wordless strips in book form. An endearing little boy with a monster cowlick, Liō lives in a world where monsters surround him, a lobster becomes his house pet, and Death sends him notes asking to meet behind the school after class. Liō accepts his strange companions matter-of-factly, and he oftens finds great joy - expressed by a huge, toothy grin - in using his bizarre environment to outwit his bemused father or would-be school bullies.Some of the strips are mildly amusing, others make me laugh out loud, and a very few leave me scratching my head and wondering what I’m missing. But overall, anyone with an offbeat, Far Side-style sense of humor will enjoy Mark Tatulli's adventures of this small boy beset by the bizarre.