Lio and the Fourth Wall

I have to admit when I first became aware of Lio, I didn’t like it much. But Mark Tatulli‘s humor has grown on me. And I especially like the way he plays with the conventions of the daily comic strip.

Here are two recent variations on a theme, calling the reader’s attention to something that’s always there (but never seen). The panel borders provide context to a comic strip’s panel, but they usually aren’t noticed by the reader. In these cases, though, they’re the point of the humor.

In the first, Lio shreds the vertical borders with his helicopter. And note the final panel. There are no borders at all. The helicopter is alone in (apparently) a wide open space.(click on images to enlarge)

Genius.

The second breaks the horizontal border – literally. It’s an effective way to show just how limiting the real estate allotted to each individual comic can be. And have some fun with that fact.

Brilliant!