Metapost: News Roundup

So before I do that book review, I figured a news roundup was also in order. First up, we have an article from Editor and Publisher that discusses the current circulation of the comic. Highlights include that you can now read Liō in nearly 275 papers, that the pantomime format is ideal for selling the comic overseas, and that it has quite a foothold in Asia.

Also, the Hattiesburg American is currently giving several new strips a trial after the end of Kudzu. If you live in an area serviced by that paper, now is your chance to ensure a permanent place for our Dark Child! Hopefully in lieu of B.C. or the Wizard of Id. Which are far darker than Liō considering the dead writers and artists involved and all.

The Liō Sundays will be replacing the Kudzu Sundays in North Carolina's News and Observer. The dailies are not running, but it's always worth a few letters to the editor if you're in the area to beg for a daily dose.

Unpleasant dreams

8/14/07:You'd think Papa Liō would be well aware of the kinds of stories his son likes. He must be - there's a resigned glumness to his face as he alters the storyline. Perhaps he wished, in vain, that he might cultivate a sense of pleasantry and normality in his son? Yet at his son's clear dislike, he gives up and allows Liō to instead dream, nut of sugar plums, but of terror and destruction. In the end, Papa Liō knows that this is his child's fate as he looks up to Heaven and asks silently "Are you *sure* he's one yours?"

Metapost: Back from the depths

So in the time since my last post, several significant things happened.

1) I missed a great storyline about Liō at summer camp.
2) My personal life went topsy-turvy between my cousin's wedding and numerous other crazy things that are too boring and chaotic to be of interest
3) The first Liō collection came out.

So here's what I'm going to do. Much as I hate it, I have to let July go, sadly. Hope all two of you that read this out there at least got to read it. Hope you got to read August's material too, because I'm just going to start with today, fresh and clean.

So the first update will be today's comic. The second update, which will go up tonight, will be a review of the new collection, which arrived at my home yesterday. Before the review goes up, however, I definitely recommend it. Full color Sundays, amusing opening by Steve Pastis of the equally humorous Pearls Before Swine, and naturally, the earliest days of Liō.

Enjoy guys, and feel free to flog me in the future when I slack off like that again.

Predators for Fun and Profit

6/29/07You know, it's never said that's Liō's dragon. But he doesn't seem to upset when the man is kidnapped, and he's certainly quite happy that the guy's wallet has now become his by virtue of the man's being devoured. I'd wager that if that dragon doesn't belong to our Dark Child, then he's probably made a habit of stalking the area waiting for this sort of thing to happen. Those giant robots, plutonium jars, dinosaurs, and 8-legged-sweaters do not come cheap.

Pain and Suffering

For some reason I thought yesterday had an update. In supplication, double post!

6/27/07
I'm probably more amused than I should be by the chiding laughter of the birds at Liō's failure to fly. Did the Wright brothers, in their initial failures to achieve flight, ever receive such cruel reactions from the very species they were attempting to emulate?

6/28/07
And so Papa Liō quickly dies on the beach after giving his very last breath for the enjoyment of his only son. Liō, either unaware of his passing or unconcerned by it, joyously forges a path into the ocean using the result of his father's lethal actions.

Kooks, Apocalypse, and Mechas

So I was busy most of the weekend and then part of the week. As a result, experience the great Liō Quintuple Postravanganza!

6/22/07
Liō takes shots at nerds a lot, despite the fact I highly doubt Mark Tatulli is unaware of the extreme geek appeal of his comic. Still, I must wonder - why does Cool Clothes carry clothes for Kooks? And where are the Girls clothes? Seriously, I think they need to rethink their business angle.

6/23/07I don't have much more to add. Really. The guy's about to be a squishy little pancake. What more can I add to that?

6/24/07Two days of robots, two days of impending doom! I like how the rampaging robot destruction is handled, not by the army, but a trip to the principal's office. Clearly, our Dark Child has a self-imposed quota before he ceases his killing for the day or he'd have naturally turned the robot on the school to ensure his freedom.

6/25/07
It is rare that the tables are turned on the Dark Child. But today, Papa Liō has his victory. He enjoys an ice cold beer as he watches the suffering of his only child. It is no wonder where Liō has learned his behavior from.

6/26/07And finally, we see Leeroy Hateeachother, I mean, Lockhorn, taken away by the police after a harrowing evening of domestic terror. No doubt by morning, Loretta will have bailed him out and the cycle of abuse will continue.

I intend to not get so far behind in the future, so hopefully this will be the last Quintuple Postravanganza.

The Genesis Tub

Again, childhood wish fulfillment is the order of the day. Liō, like many children his age, feels ripped off by the reality that sea monkeys are just brine shrimp. Unlike those other children who are a boring and don't have their comics, Liō has a remedy for this.

Of course, considering that plutonium, no doubt the monkeys and/or Liō now have cancer. Which condemns them to appearing in Funky Winkerbean for the rest of their likely short lives. I will note that panel two depicts multiple sea monkeys while the final pinal has only two. Perhaps the cancer has already killed off all but these two survivors.

Metapost: Retail roundup

As this is a fan blog, I'd like to try and post roundups of Liō in the news or references in interesting sources. While not entirely on topic of the commenting on Liō strips, its kind of nice to see Liō getting around.

Retail, 6/18/07
I hadn't even heard of Retail, but a run through the Google news finder brought to my attention that it had made an amusing Liō reference. I particularly like how Liō is rendered only in black and white. It makes him appear even creepier than usual. While Liō is no stranger to making jokes about other comics, this is the first strip I know of that has referenced Liō. The Dark Child spreads his tendrils further!

Another sighting came yesterday in a letter to the editor in the Winston-Salem Journal. I appreciate that the writer not only defended the Dark Child, but also taken shots at the never-ending hells of Blondie and Dennis the Menace. The latter of whom Liō seems to be putting to shame as far as the menacing factor.

I'd like to note that the Winston-Salem Journal is one of quite a few papers that seems to be swapping Peanuts with Liō. Now I have nothing against Peanuts, except that its in endless reruns and Shulz was pretty adamant that there be no reruns. But I find it amusing that when people seem to think of Peanuts replacements, our Dark Child comes to mind, especially considering today's catapulting strip.

Candy, candy, candy, Christmas

6/20/07
Here's some classic Liō dark humor. Nothing starts my day quite like a children getting launched out of catapults at a quarter a pop. Lucy must be having a slow day down at the old psychiatric office if Liō can get them lining up for 20 cents more.

Again, the real joy for me is the underreaction. Father Liō seems only mildly upset, rather than horrified at the doubtlessly large pile of broken bodies. Liō, of course, doesn't seem to think he's doing anything wrong.

I personally wonder - does Liō's ride get repeat customers? Does he prevent refunds just by shaming his victims into believing their thoughts were not wonderful enough?

Come into my parlor

6/19/07Liō's pets are at it again. Today is Spider's first appearance on the blog. I'm particularly amused by Liō's reaction here. There's the fact that his first reaction to a missing pet poster is to assume Spider is the culprit. Second, there's the way he's practically scolding Spider, rather than acting horrified that neighborhood pets have come very close to being on the menu (or perhaps they already have?) I can imagine that this is a regular occurrence.

The real question is - what is Spider eating if he's not supposed to have pets? Cat-sized flies? Which actually would make sense in this comic, but I digress.

Fun with Robots

6/18/07Hey look, Papa Liō is still alive and with us!

Naturally, a child of Liō's temperament has found himself in trouble at school frequently. Like most characters in the strip, the teacher here has no name, but this isn't her first appearance. Today's strip also shows another common theme - robots. Liō is quite the mechanic and machines and robots are frequently deployed in his master plans.

But as we can see today, his plans are not always flawless. In fact, judging from the thickness of that stack of papers, our dark child has likely generated numerous robot-related concerns. Personally, I'd like to know whether the robot could have carried on a conversation had its spring-loaded head not popped off.

Happy Father's Day!

6/17/07
Naturally, any comic about a child is going to involve the child constantly one-upping the authority figures in his life. In a cast this small, Liō's ever-suffering father is usually the target.

Take today - here the man is given the impression that his adoring son is celebrating Father's Day. It is immediately subverted by the darker motivation - not love, but a selfish desire to bring his dinosaur (that is a dinosaur, right?) into the home via massive destruction of his father's property. Look at him. Sitting so blissfully, enjoying his gift, not realizing that in a few moments that dinosaur is going to squash him into a puddle. Perhaps this explains the absence of Mother Liō?

The First Post

Currently it seems blogs about comic strips are all the rage. While perhaps it was the likes of The Comics Curmudgeon that kicked off the fun by reading the comics so we don't have to, many others have come to life to focus on specific strips. Things like This Week in Milford (for your boring sports needs), Permanent Monday, and Stuck Funky. There's even a blog for that really crappy newspaper Spider-Man.

What all these blogs have in common is that they mainly stick to highlighting the shortcomings of the newspaper comics. Which is normally fine, because its no secret that most people absolutely hate newspaper comic strips.

And it was with great joy to find out that not only was I not a lone, a comic writer agreed with me and was willing to express it on the comics page. As shown on The Comics Curmudgeon with an attack on the dreaded FOOBiverse and later the morbid pleasure of many comics characters being devoured by giant ants.

That man is Mark Tatulli. And that delightful comic that he draws (he draws two of them, ya know!) is Liō.

Liō is one of two comics that do not exist solely on the Internet that consistantly make me laugh (the other is Pearls Before Swine). Liō is the tale of a bright, imaginative young boy that lives in and perpetuates a surreal, almost gothicly twisted world. Or as the press blurb puts it:

"LIO is an unusual kind of comic strip and we think you’ll love it.

First LIO has no dialog. It tells stories only with images -- a "pantomine strip" says Mark Tatulli, the creator. Next, LIO’s main character is a curious young boy with an imagination that’s unleashed by bumps in the night and things hiding under the bed. And LIO offers various shades of dark humor along with straightforward laughs.

This strip offers a fresh outlook and appeals to everyone, especially young readers..and readers who remember being young..and those who wish they were young. LIO is a comic strip that’s edgy, funny, visually stunning and truly different."

But that doesn't really summon the perverse pleasure of a Liō strip. In Liō, you are usually guaranteed a truly perverse spin on something seemingly innocuous. And when its surrounded by the tired humor of the Family Circus or B.C., it stands out as a really well-written funny.

This blog came about as my attempt to spread the dark joy that is Liō. As it is just barely a year old, many newspapers don't carry it. And as Liō is a genuinely funny strip most of the time, few comics blogs speak of it because it's a lot more fun to rip on Funky Cancercancer. Here at The Dark Child, I'll be talking about the daily Liō strip, what I enjoy about it, and possibly give some kind of witty insight.

Outside of your newspaper, Liō is most easily read at gomics.com, which gives you a full month of previous strips for free.

Here begins - the chronicles of The Dark Child.