Lio's Border Patrol

Mark Tatulli, in his strip Lio, riffed on comic strip panels before. They're so much a part of the comic strip convention, most readers never notice the rectangular shapes that frame the pictures and order the events. In September and October of 2016, Tatulli offered up several different ways of considering the panel border, each one imaginative and unique.

Note that there is no center panel. Lio bends open the side of the second panel and flies across to the fourth. Why? Because without its borders, the middle panel is a vast empty void.

Tautlli's poked fun at Family Circus before (sometimes with a rather sharp stick). The Family Circus began as the Family Circle in 1960, which is why it's drawn in a circle rather than a rectangular panel. Family Circle magazine objected, and so the name was changed -- but not the panel shape. In this strip, Tatulli suggests it's not a circle, but a globe -- with another poke at the too-cute Family Circle characters.

This sequence is very simple. The first panel sets up the gag, the second delivers. But take a moment to consider what the second panel means. In the first panel, the borders are treated like wire frames around a 3-D world. Here, the zipper implies the entire panel is a flat 2-D surface, with the border forming the edge of this fabric-like material.

Is this a panel border gag? I think it is. There's no panel border in the first frame. Lio is literally outside the comic strip, seeking admission. If there were a border around him, the sequence wouldn't make any sense.

In this final example, Lio's flame, Eva Rose, blows up the panel to separate them. The first and last panels have borders, but they're shredded around the explosion. The single panel has been broken in two. And, like in the first example, the middle panel has no frame -- it's that empty void again, only this time with a surface (where the crater is). Tatulli suggests the openness of the void by having the smoke rise above the tops of the outside panels.

One concept, five different takes -- and that's just with this batch. The inventiveness of Tatulli is remarkable and it keeps me reading Lio every day.

Lio and the Family Circus 3

Lio creator Mark Tartulli is one of the newer generation of artists who seem to have a certain.. disdain for the venerable comic the Family Circus (see Lio and the Family Circus 1 and 2). And, as I've also noted, Tartulli likes to play with the fourth wall of the comic strip genre -- specifically, the outlines of the panel that generally go unnoticed by the reader (see: Lio and the Fourth Wall for other examples).

In his New Year's Eve strip for 2015, Tartulli brilliantly combined both. (click on image to enlarge)

It's what keeps me reading the funny pages.

Breaking the Fourth Wall of Comics

Last Thursday two cartoonists teamed up to create something unique. Each turned in their regular comic strip that with a gag. But if you were lucky enough to read them on the same comics page, both together created a third gag that perhaps was greater than the whole.

To start the process, look at Stephen Pastis' strip "Pearls Before Swine."

If you've follow "Pearls Before Swine," you know that Pastis has riffed on the squeaky-clean single-panel comic "Family Circus" before. And perhaps you might think it was Pastis just having fun at another strip's expense.

Now look at the Family Circus panel for the same day.

The "Not Me" gag is a well-established one, and there have been variants on this theme for years. The mother demands to know who spilled the milk, or broke the vase, or tracked mud into the house, and one or more of the children say "Not Me" as the aptly-named invisible character runs away.

If you saw the "Family Circus" without the "Pearls Before Swine" strip, you might think this was just another Not Me gag.

But it's not.

Usually Not Me runs away with a mischievous glance over its shoulder. Not this time. Note that Not Me walks away with a shrug -- not even it knows who threw the sunflower seeds on the floor.

And there in lies the genius of this collaboration. By breaking the fourth wall (in this case, the barrier between comics), Pastis and Keene have delivered a joke that is far funnier (in part because its unexpected) than either strip delivers individually.

Now that's comic genius.