silent these largely dialogue free toons certainly are, but deadly they're not. They neither caustic, different or funny enough. Silent but charming would be a duller but more accurate epithet. ( )

I received this book as part of the LT Early Reviewers' group. Before this, I hadn't heard of the comic strip Lio, nor the cartoonist Mark Tatulli.

Like so many of the best cartoonists, you need a little time and familiarity to get the vibe, and understand where Tatulli's sense of humour comes from. If you do that, the book does contain some gems.

That said, I'm not a total fan. The idea of the strip has a single conceit--that young boys delight in icky stuff, fooling adults and getting one-up on each other. Plenty of laughs to be had in this material, but they're quick, silly laughs. Not the kind of laughs that you get from a Charles Addams or a Gary Larson, where you're given pause to think.

Lio's jokes work when the monsters, ghouls and creepy-crawlies of a child's imagination somehow make their way into the real world. Jokes that rely on the real world alone (like where he jokes about his father) fall flat.

Funny: An innocent-looking kid playing Scrabble with Frankenstein, frustrated by the monster's inability to spell anything but "mmmmm".

Not funny: The child finds a tin-can-and-string telephone on the footpath. He picks it up to hear "I'm calling about an exciting offer..." Frankly, I would expect Charlie Brown to do that.

And the bits where Tatulli parodies other comic strips really grate on me, I'm afraid. Lio's world where monsters come alive is interesting. A world where other comic strips come alive--well, it wears thin very quickly. ( )

received under the librarything.com Early Reviewers Program

I've not encountered Lio previously. It took me a few strips to get a feel for the characters but once I did this book was a lot of fun, and far more entertaining than the syndicated comics which appear in my own daily newspaper.

I particularly enjoyed the strips in which Lio was inserted into other well-known comic worlds (Charles M. Schultz's "Peanuts" for example)

I'll be passing this copy on for others to enjoy, and I'll keep my eye out for more of Mark Tatulli's work to read in the future. ( )

I’d never heard of LiÓ or Mark Tatulli before receiving and reading Silent but Deadly, which is based on his syndicated comic strip. I was not very impressed when I began reading. I didn’t really get the humor. However, the more I read, the more I found myself laughing at the antics of a small boy whose friends consist of monsters, ghouls, and every conceivable type of bug. Mr. Tatulli has a consistent sense of dark humor. Imagine this: You see LiÓ wearing goggles putting dead bugs in an ice cube tray and the next box shows his dad freaking out when he accidently (or is it an accident?) sees that he’s used the ice in a drink. LiÓ is frequently pulling pranks on his dad and vice versa. Each trying to outdo the other. By the end of the book I found myself going back and re-reading from the beginning. I gave the book to my 17 year old nephew and he loved it. He can’t wait for it to come out in bookstores to get his own copy. ( )

What a delight. I was not familiar with Lio and his adventures before receiving this book. After the first few pages, I knew it was a book that must be shared with family and friends, particularly those who enjoy the works of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton.