Modern Cartooning

Bagge's collection of misfits, nerds and assorted losers represents American satirical cartooning at its most inventively hilarious. He serves up the worst that American suburban "culture" has to offer. Junior is a simpleminded oaf who hates to leave the safety of his mother's house. When he does venture out, he ends up with a degenerate for a landlord and an unscrupulous conman as a housemate - an untoward experience which sends him quickly back to mom. But not all of Bagge's characters are geeks. Chet and Bunny Leeway, a quick, youngish couple living inexplicably in alienatingly bland suburbia, star in the most amusing stories in this collection. Their encounters with neighbors who are bigoted and proud of it, with radical castrating feminists and conniving artists and with their own engagingly neurotic personalities exemplify Bagge's ability to convey a sincere and subtle portrait of a happily modern relationship.

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