Lio by Mark Tatulli for March 12, 2010

ACK!!! Dagwood Zombie!!!!!

Now is that B.C. or Peter zombie?

–And Hagar; and even–gasp–Charlie Brown! Squishy! Hold that panel! Lio, call Cybil from the armory, quickly!

Charlie Brown zombie? Now that’s too scary.

Let’s see… Hagar the Horrible, someone I don’t know, Dagwood Bumpstead, Charlie Brown and B.C. Who is that between Hagar and Dag?

If anyone’s looking for me, I’m hiding under my bed!

Alice went to wonderland?

comixavier, I believe that is Heart from Heart of the City.

Good grief!

That could be Hi from Hi and Lois.

I think it is Elly from for better or for worse.

Mark must have written this after he found out that The Denver Post was dropping Liõ.

Carmy, I find it hard to believe Mark would have put one of his own characters in here.

I think KingRat nailed it.

Where’s the Twinkies?

That’s great - all the dead comics on the comics page have come to eat lio’s brain - definitely my favorite lio ever.

I think that it’s Beetle Bailey between Hagar and Dagwood

I always though Dagwood was one of the undead.. wouldn’t he be like 110 by now anyway, and hasn’t aged a day.

priceless!

Doc Toon:

No kidding! Lio once lost out to Peanuts reruns in a readers poll to select a new strip for the local paper here. ( I STILL can’t get over that. )

Someone else here once suggested a plausible reason for this; it’s because the demographic that still reads newspapers is gradually getting older and older.

As far as ripping on toons that should stay dead and buried tho, sorry Mr. Tatulli, but nobody does that better than Jason Yungbluth’s Weapon Brown.

( Which is very much an ‘R’ rated comic, which is why I’m not posting a link. )

I think Charlie Brown is just searching for the Little Red-Headed Girl’s brains … .

Even if Dagwood was the only zombie, the world is doomed. He eats more than 10 men combined!

Zombies! Can’t live with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em.

@gillbillvolume1 - how do you explain Dick Clark then?

I was thinking the unknown person, er zombie, was either Elly or Heart as well!

And I beg to differ, I still enjoy those strips. It’s nice to see something in this day and age that is still around and still funny, IMHO.

It does look a lot like Heart, which would be a cute meta-joke, but I agree with King Rat that it’s probably Ellie Patterson from FBOFW.

Love it.

I enjoy those strips, too, Dry. They are nice tributes to the people who likely inspired them to follow in their footsteps. And I read all of these strips growing up - and still do.

It’s HI from HI & LOIS…out of the context of his own strip, he’s pretty hard to place.

Grog, I still find them to be very funny also. But this is a good one, too. Love it!

Lio is ALWAYS my biggest laugh of the morning. Now that Mark told us it was Hi, did we ever find out for sure if it’s BC or Peter? I think it’s Peter, personally.

Quick someone do some online research … are all those comic strips represented by the “zombies” also comics which are being printed long after their creators have passed??

Mark - Thank you for clearing that up for us.

Yes, I believe all of these zombie comics are continuing after their original creators have long passed.

And that is NOT Heart

Awesome .

newspapers, those that still exist at all these days, are mostly zombies, so it follows that they would run those zombie comics.

Great one! (Though I’m a little sorry to see Charlie Brown there… still a Peanuts fan, I admit… ;) )

i loved that movie man

steve: hiliarious! charlie brown is going to get her back for never falling in love with him like he loved her.

awesome comic as usual!

I beg to differ with the demographics comment. I never cared much for ‘Peanuts’, and love ‘Lio’. Age 62 and 10/12

Hooray for older people who are LIO fans! I’m on my way to being one myself!

Our local keeps running “Peanuts” and “Ziggy”, but ignoring strips like “Lio”. They didn’t run “Boondocks” either.

I really do not see the humor in a lot of the older strips. They’re insipid. Some of them are not even remotely close to amusing. Few are clever, or relevant.

I miss Breathed and Watterson and McGruder. I’m glad there are still edgy strips like “Lio” out there. We need it.

Way funnier than the movie. Except for Woody.

Ageism!!!

I never much cared for Peanuts or Blondie. And I still subscribe to a daily paper (that prints the comics too small to read for anyone who’s not part raptor). I really would like to see Pogo again though.

Reminiscence alert:

My parents used to subscribe to the Sunday Denver Post – by mail. It got to our town on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Thanks a lot, Simon_Jester - that’s what I really needed - a new comic…(looks pretty interesting)

Loved this “Lio” - added it to my “That Which Makes Me Spit Out My Coffee” collection.

Thanks Mark, I’m 53 & I’ve been a comic fan all my life. Comic books started me on a life long love of reading. I never saw Lio until I logged onto this site last year but it is now one of my favorites. I just picked up your new book. FANTASTIC!!

This is like that “Marvel Zombies” series.

Now THAT is full of awesomeness.

I thought that was Dean, not Heart. No hat.

Hagar unleashed! I’ll be under the bed.

“Watch your Head” did this gag first. There was a week-long series where the guys were watching trailers for upcoming movies based on comic strips; the last one was for Zombie Island, which had undead versions of Dagwood, Hagar, et cetera. The guys didn’t like it, but two geezers with toothless smiles said, “Wonderful!”

The series starts here: http://comics.com/watch(underscore)your(underscore)head/2009-06-08/

Remember to replace “(underscore)” with “_”.

Reminds me of another Lio strip contrasting brilliant comics that were gone too soon with ancient comics that somehow continue to take up space in newspapers:

http://www.gocomics.com/lio/2007/02/28/

Heh. I’m sure Ellie is thrilled that she looks like zombie Hi.

I thought it was Heart because I mistook Dagwood’s cowlick for her ponytail.

so good.

Better change the channel Lio

how can you tell it’s Ellie?

Mark cleared it all up on page 1. It’s Hi from Hi and Lois. A lot of us old timers, not old, old, but who have been reading comics since K and beyond seem to be “dated” because we still like the old strips. I still like the old strips, also have found a lot of new ones, guess that’s why I read close to 200 a day now, or play catch up through my email inbox!

At least Lio seems to be in the arms of someone who loves him.

I’m 71, and sad that the SLC “Deseret News” dropped Lio several months ago. My son-in-law forwards to me the strip every day.

I learned to love the strips starting when I was three with the DN who published “Henry,” “Nancy,” “Prince Valiant” and “L’il Abner.” The last was by Al Kapp, and my dad or older sisters would read it to me. The first two, like Lio, did not always have dialog.

I don’t mind if a strip outlives its creator if they can maintain the original quality or at least occasionally do something entertaining. But the truly dead strips, like Peanuts, can never offer anything new.

I would have continued subscribing to Peanuts if they had started reruns from the beginning when the strip was sharp and satirical. (The first Peanuts: “Good old Charlie Brown. How I hate him!”) But I have dropped Peanuts, FBOFW, Hi and Lois, and several other oldies are teetering on the edge. Meantime, great strips like Big Top and Citizen Dog die. Makes me mad.

I have never seen Ishy look worried before.

Great strip, Mark!

Oh no! Zombie Hagar!!!

What a great idea - can’t believe no-one has thought of doing this before! Whether you think the old strips are as good or better than the new ones, the fact is that many strips that have long-outlived their original creators make it really hard (if not impossible) for new, original strips to find space on the comics pages, which is making it really hard for anyone to make a living as a comic strip artist anymore (unless you’re “lucky” enough to take over someone else’s strip for the rest of your life). And does anyone actually think the warmed-over versions of these old strips live up to the ones drawn by the original artists? Anyway, brilliant joke!

Uh, why is Charlie Brown amongst the zombies? Charles Schulz insisted on doing everything himself and declared on February 13, 2000 that he was retiring and that no one would be continuing his strip. A brilliant decision, I must say.