Lio by Mark Tatulli for July 06, 2021

who would seriously want a box of Cracker Jacks like that?

I can remember when they gave away real toys in crackerjack boxes nowadays its just a stupid tiny comic.

Surpise in every box! (Well, can’t have any trademark violations, can we?)

But I don’t think I want to find out what a surpise looks like…

That would make a good “Twilight Zone” or “Outer Limits”. If it was the Zone perhaps Serling’s monologue would be like this: “Here is a portrait of a young man named Lio who has an insatiable appetite for macabre adventure; tonight he escapes the bounds of his mundane suburban life where he lives with a disheveled often drunk father and a psychotic feline named Cybil. Next stop, the Twilight Zone.”

Beware of tesseract snack boxes. Or Klein soda bottles.

If you can fit into the box, you’re a Cracker Jack! [I am SO old….]

Lio’ll be the surprise for the kid who finds the box.

Now Cracker Jack is a Lio-in-a-box!

Lip-smackin’, whip-crackin’, paddy-whackin’,

knickin’-knackin’, silver-rackin’, scoundrel-whackin’,

cracker-jackin’ Cracker Jack

Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts, and a Lio

That’s what you get in Cracker Jack

“Whaddya want, when ya gotta have sumthin’ …?”

If you’ve read the “Fables” comics series (written by Bill Willingham), this will remind you of the Boxers. If you haven’t… rush right out and buy or borrow some now! (There are over 40 trade-paperback story collections in the series). Your library might have at least some of them.

Surprise!

Definitely truthful in advertising…..

Sid and Marty Krofft just called…

Those boxes with surprise black holes were not supposed to go on store shelves!

A real cracker jack kid.

I thought this might be the start of an arc, with us finding out tomorrow what’s in the box besides Lio. But showing some kind of alternate world within “Lio” seems redundant.

Imagine opening up a box of Cracker Jacks and finding Lio.

Portals come in many shapes and sizes.

Wouldn’t you like to be a Cracker, too?

Wow what surprise!