The comic strip Lio, playing fast-and-loose of late with the strip's original, no-dialog conceit, seems to have moved on to a new gimmick to keep the young people's attention: Bashing other, less hip comic strips. Lio's shenanigans on the set of For Better or for Worse delighted us all a few months ago, and today he turns his sights on that great, defender-of-marriage strip, The Lockhorns. Domestic violence has never been so hilarious.

Kudos to you, Mark Tatulli. Honestly, this made me laugh out loud more than any comic strip I've read in some time (Mary Worth excluded, of course).

In today's Sunday comics, two strips decided to call out their competition for ridicule (though in the case of Pearls Before Swine, the mockery seems to fall in the category of good-natured ribbing):

Lio attacks For Better or for Worse (which is like shooting fish in a barrel...or, to borrow from Todd Barry, like shooting a barrel)

Pearls Before Swine is a tad jealous of Get Fuzzy

I only recently started reading both Get Fuzzy and Pearls Before Swine regularly, but I'd have to say Pearls Before Swine is probably my favorite current comic strip. I've also started reading Lio recently, and today's strip reflects my confusion about the strip's nature. I was under the impression that one of the strip's signifying qualities was the general lack of dialogue, like a silent film. I knew this wasn't a hard and fast, inviolable law of nature, but still, in the time I've been reading it, it's been awfully wordy. Kind of hurts the strip's charm (the strip is pretty repetitive, and certainly hasn't lived up to my first impressions).

UPDATE: Well, seeing as I linked to Pearls Before Swine, I should probably link to today's Get Fuzzy, too, since it was pretty funny.