I'm starting to get the impression that Salon simply prints the self-righteous rantings of Debra Dickerson mainly because of the amount of traffic/letters she generates, rather than any actual contribution to political thinking.

Here we go again. A few months ago, Salon published an article about a woman freaking out about especially busty mannequins, which lead to her concluding that anyone who has large breasts is freaky and unnatural (had to have surgery, in other words). Enter a flood of grumpy letters from the naturally big-busted.

And now this, which is pretty much the same thing. Debra freaks out about models with big butts and concludes that anyone who has them is freaky and unnatural (obese, in this case). Never mind the fact that she undermines her own case by choosing as the scorn of her ire a model who, titanic booty aside, doesn't meet the classical definition of obese by a long shot.

As has been said before, even thin people can have big butts. Duh.

What women's body part is Salon going to criticize next? Ankles? Noses?

Its attempts at humor and random wackiness fall flat on its face, it's not meaningful to anyone but the authors, and trying to interpret any hint of form in those random, unappealing lines gives me a headache.

Guess Salon had to balance out the whimsical, painterly quality of Opus with some crap.

So apparently we're getting nothing but elitist name-dropping, the occasional ham-handed attempt at humor ("The World is Flat University?" oh, come on now) that simultaneously isn't funny and wrecks any chance for emotional depth or meaning, and indistinct, copy n' pasted scribbles. Is Kansas EVER going to have a different expression on her face? At least that penguin in Tom Tomorrow occasionally moves his beak now and again.

I agree with dust1969. It's as if a writer and graphic artist, who may be talented in their own fields, decided to throw together a comic in the mistaken belief that it's easy. It's not. And unless the two of them figure out a way to work together and have the text and visuals serve each other (as in the best comics) instead of existing in separate universes, it's going to remain an embarrassment.

Look. I can't speak for everyone here, but unlike what the lone starred letter suggested, I'm not a joyless whiner constantly on a crusade to stamp out whatever unfortunate thing that crosses my eyes and doesn't get my complete approval. I've never actually written in to a piece of entertainment negatively before.

Until now. Want to know why? Kansas O'Flaherty is truly, TRULY awful.

The art is horrible and copy n' pasted, the plot doesn't exist, the whole purpose of the strip is based on snobby references.

This strip is like the snob version of Family Guy -- it believes that cultural references are inherently funny/meaningful, and thus vomits them out there unaltered in lieu of actual wit.

Five scenes I'd like to see in KOF? That's easy...

1. Something happens that causes Kansas to sport a different facial expression.

2. We hear something about somebody's past that isn't a cultural reference.

3. One of the characters develops an actual personality.

4. A frame depicts some form of dynamic movement, rather than something that resembles a still life.

5. Something interesting happens, rather than people just talking about it after the fact.

...how nearly all the few posts that defend this thing do so anonymously.

C'mon, be brave enough to use your name(s). Otherwise we'll continue to assume you're Toni.

Interesting that a few defenders have said, essentially, "well, it's SUPPOSED to be bad! Its entire purpose is to annoy the audience!"

But that doesn't appear to be the case. What likely happened is that Toni and Tom pitched the idea to Salon, Salon accepted it because they're a noted writer/illustrator, and ran it without question. Unfortunately, Toni and Tom made the mistake of assuming that making comics was easy.

This strip is a bit less bad in that there's no copy and pasting or text bubbles all over the place, though the text bubbles might be due to the lack of dialog in this strip. I'm concerned the clutter may return.

Though there's a stab at action, there's STILL too much telling, rather than showing. Instead of four huge panels with tons of exposition, how about a cluster of smaller panels during the key points of action? The layout doesn't have to be symmetrical, after all. The writing is still a bit of a mess... the use of "anyway" just reinforces the idea that they're blathering randomly about nothing consequential.

Okay, I'll give this week's strip credit: Kansas actually sported a different facial expression for once. There were less random cultural references. "Agrarian Now" is bordering on mildly funny. And there was some pseudo-action in the tomato-flinging.

But for crap's sake, show, don't tell! I'm sick of all the exposition being crammed into tiny text boxes while the art depicts absolutely nothing happening. Also, the tomato-flinging itself isn't interesting enough to wonder why it's happening and tune in next week; it's something that requires a little more explanation to become intriguing.

Although I really hope the tomato-flinging isn't leading up to a bout of whining by the authors about how stupid readers don't "get" them. It didn't work for M. Night in "Lady in the Water," and it sure won't work here.