Through the age-old style of pantomime strips, Tatulli's Li offers a decidedly new and edgy twist to the wordless comic format. That's right—Li is so crafty it doesn't need word balloons, dialogue boxes, or copious captions. Employing a unique drawing style influenced by cartooning greats Gahan Wilson, Charles Addams, and 19th-century satirist A. J. Volck, Tatulli's cartoon creation is completely nonsyllabic but dramatic nonetheless, and was awarded as 2009's Best Newspaper Comic Strip by the National Cartoonists Society.
The result of Tatulli's creativity is a mind-bending, comical, and astute journey into the darkly detailed world of spiky-haired Li, a curious young scientist and comic book fan whose daydreams embark from the dark chasm where wit and sarcasm collide.
Defender of the defenseless and the inventor of a legion of zombie bunnies, Li is joined in his day-to-day exploits by his exasperated and sleep-deprived father, a pet snake named Frank, a squid named Ishmael, and various imaginary robots and creepy, crawly monsters. Within this humorously macabre framework of sarcasm, parody, and high jinx, sidesplitting laughter abounds—all without so much as a word.