If the Far Side was drawn when the artist was in a darkly depressed state, Lio is what would have emerged.

Edgy and grimly funny, the strips follow the misadventures of Lio - a boy voted mostly to grow up to be an evil genius. Whether it's building a super-robot, crying with his dragon friends when the Knight wins, or making a swamp for zombies Lio manages to be surprisingly funny each page. ( )

A genius blend of out-of-the-ordinary comic illustrations of a little boy who does not dream of cute and cuddly things like most other comic children, but the macabre and horrific, but in a sweet way.. if thats possible, but Mark Tatulli has proved it is. ( )

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. ( )