Just another day...
A newspaper comic by Mark Tatulli, revolving around the life of the titular character, known for its lack of dialogue, unique storylines, and creepy protagonist.
Plots revolve around the strange circumstances Lio gets into, usually with extremely dark punchlines. The comic is also known for frequently taking shots at other comic strips, both for one-offs and even occasionally longer storylines. The strip premiered in 2005.
This work contains the following tropes.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Lio's dad laughed at a drawing Lio had made of his principal being eaten by a creature at the zoo... unfortunately, he did it while they were both still in the principal's office.
- The Alcoholic: Lio's cat, Cybil loves her gin. It's also implied that Lio's dad drinks a bit as well.
- Back to the Womb: In one strip, the main character uses a time machine to send himself back to the beginning - only to find himself in the womb again.
- Badly Battered Babysitter: Lio whenever he has to look after his cousin Bubbles.
- Bedsheet Ghost:
- This strip
plays with it. - Lio is shown wearing one in this strip.
- This strip
- Brain Bleach: In one strip, Lio goes to wash out his eyes after he goes swimming and catches Ariel making out with Spongebob Squarepants.
- Bully Hunter: Lio sometimes terrorizes bullies, and the occasional predatory animal.
- Butt-Monkey:
- Lio himself seems to have fallen into this nowadays.
- Not to mention his dad.
- Cardiovascular Love: Parodied at least twice, once with duct tape for a broken one, and once when it needed a defibrillator.
- Cats Are Mean: Lio's cat Cybil.
- Caught in a Snare: Averted in the February 13, 2009 strip where Lio lays a Valentine card in the loop of a snare in which he attempts to catch his crush Eva Rose. She doesn't fall for it.
- Chess with Death: Well, Shuffleboard, as seen here.
- Cool Old Lady: Lio's Grandma. Although she doesn't actually appear, we get the impression that she's cool by letter writings such as this
- Creepy Child: Lio, with his blank eyes and interesting choice of pets. Oh, and he will happily feed puppies to them.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Despite his strange taste in pets, and his friendships with slasher movie icons, Lio is a decent kid at heart.
- Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Among others, Lio is friends with Death, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, and a giant man-eating fish monster.
- Editorial Synaesthesia: In one Running Gag, Lio's crush on Eva is shown as a heart in the usual fashion, which Eva then physically shreds/stabs/etc..
- Eldritch Abomination: Lio has a pet cthulhu named Cephalopod. (No, that isn't backwards.)
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite Lio's love of all things creepy and pranks, he seems to draw the line at legitimately hurting people (unless they deserve it, of course). He's often shown keeping his various pets (usually Cybil) from harming innocent people/animals.
- Everyone Hates Fruitcakes: In one strip, Lio finds a box labelled "Fruit Cake" and uses the fruitcake itself as a footstool to pin a Christmas stocking up on the fireplace.
- Fluffy Tamer: In the September 12, 2010 strip, Lio tries to tame the monster from Cloverfield using a giant hamster cage and a huge steak. Judging by the monster's face, it looks pretty tempted.
- Friend to All Living Things: Lio loves and is loved by all animals, from monsters, to squids, to bunnies — although this does come with an awareness that some of his animal friends eat other animals or even humans, and a willingness to indulge their appetites. His tendency to automatically take the side of the animals in any animal vs. human situations does manage to backfire rather spectacularly on one occasion, when he's mugged by some baby ducks he just saved from a hunter.
- Funny Terrain Cross Section: In this strip Lio is using a metal detector on a beach, and is excited when it "beeps", but is soon disappointed to find nothing but a crumpled old beverage can just below the surface. A few feet below that is an entire Flying Saucer, complete with mummified alien.
- Heroic Mime: Lio.
- Kick the Dog: Lio once fed Pinocchio to termites.
- Made from Real Girl Scouts: Ripped off the trope-naming joke once, and has had other jokes based on the same general idea.
- Missing Mom: It's eventually revealed that she has died, in a Christmas strip no less, although with no mention of where or when.
- Mouse Hole: In the January 20, 2024 strip, Cybil the psycho cat is about to use a flame thrower to go after what looks like a whole family of mice huddled inside a classic mouse hole.
- Mr. Imagination: Lio, although it plays a smaller role in the strip than you might think. Almost all the weird stuff that happens is explicitly real — backed up by
Word of God — and it's nearly always completely unambiguous about the rare occasions where it isn't. - Nightmare Fetishist: Lio has a giant squid and a snake as pets. He tried to bring them to the school dance once.
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Lio. Are you starting to get an idea of what this strip is like?
- No Smoking: Lio seems not to like smokers very much.
- Not So Above It All: Lio's dad can't resist pulling his own pranks on his son sometimes.
- Obviously Evil:
- Anyone who's an Asshole Victim is readily identifiable by having bad teeth.
- Eva has even worse teeth than most of the Asshole Victims. Draw your own conclusions.
- One-Word Title: Also a Protagonist Title.
- Open-Minded Parent: Despite getting exasperated by his son's macabre antics sometimes, Lio's dad clearly loves and accepts him, no matter what.
- Pet the Dog: Despite her dislike of Lio, Eva doesn't hesitate to rescue him when the dinner ladies capture him and try to cook him.
- Perky Goth: Lio himself.
- Protagonist Title: Also a One-Word Title.
- Rejection Affection: No matter how much (and how cruelly) Eva Rose rejects his advances, Lio never stops his efforts to win her over.
- Robot Master: Lio is constantly making new friends. How well they work varies.
- Shout-Out: In this strip, Lio and his pet fish watch Jaws.
- Stylistic Suck: A few days after New Years in 2012, Lio notices that he's crudely drawn. He then writes a note to Mark Tatulli, the strip's creator, stating that the holidays are over and to lay off the sauce.
- Surreal Horror: Quite a lot of strips have a one-shot character appear as an Asshole Victim for two panels, then die in a bizarre and disturbing way in the third. Even the main characters are subject to random attacks by skeletons and leaf monsters, though Lio and Eva are badass enough to outfight them, and Lio's father knows when to flee.
- Take That!: Repeatedly pokes fun at other comics. It's gone after Peanuts the most, likely out of response to an incident where Tatuli received hate mail when Lio replaced Peanuts reruns in one its papers. This◊ strip probably wins an award for the most Take Thats in the entire run, while this strip◊ is probably the most brutal assault on a single comic. His ribbing at Peanuts could be seen as more of an Affectionate Parody, as in the first treasury, his comments leave the impression he has great respect for the strip. There's also this strip where Lio sets out flowers for the FoxTrot dailies in a cemetery for comic strips that also includes Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, and The Far Side. Outside the cemetery, for contrast, there's a parade of comic strip characters who are still alive despite having long ago lost any relevance or humor they may once have had, including Nancy, Dennis the Menace (US), and Dagwood.
- Toilet Humour: Used occasionally.
- Unconventional Food Usage: Lio uses a fruitcake as a footstool to hang up his Christmas stocking.
- Unfazed Everyman: Though he can still be startled, Lio's dad eventually evolves into this, reacting to his son's macabre shenanigans mostly with resigned exasperation.
- Weirdness Magnet: Weird stuff happens around Lio whether or not he actively seeks it out or causes it.
- We Will All Fly in the Future: In this strip Lio travels forward in time! Naturally, the futuristic city he finds has a number of weird-looking craft flitting around above its skyline.
