Letters to the Editor
-
I Said Stop
You're not listening. I was too subtle last time, I see. I'll be direct.
Look: It sucks, it stops. That's supposed to be a law of nature. You are spitting upon nature itself.
People get angry when they look at it, and their adrenaline increases, and they breathe harder. And that makes more carbon dioxide. You, Salon, are contributing to global warming. For shame.
But no, you laugh and think, well, a pageview's a pageview, even to look at an ugly freak. Like this strip that keeps murmuring imperceptibly, "I don't...know...what...I'm doing. Please...kill me..." But alas, no editor listens to it.
Will your crimes against Mother Earth and we pitiful things crawling upon it, looking for a laugh and finding only this pain, ever stop, o Salon?
Just stop. It's easy.
This strip...I mean...It's, it's like sea urchins being scraped across my eyes every timer I look at it, except that those would make more interesting designs.
Please.
Just.
Make.
The.
Bad.
Strip.
Stop.
For the love of this, our planet.
-
It must be horrible...
... to be compelled to read a comic strip that one hates, week after week. Surely the only thing worse is the tragic compulsion to then spend additional precious minutes of one's life writing a letter detailing exactly how one feels.
It's occurred to me that this could become a life-destroying problem. Where does it end? Once the low-hanging fruit of Kansas O'Flaherty is gone, the afflicted must seek out ever more obscure comics to read, in anguish, and then rail against. I imagine, in my own case, having to spend each day hunting down the latest Cathy, Garfield, thence perhaps Brenda Starr if I could even find her online, and so on down to the likes of Mallard Fillmore — or worse. I shudder to think.
Of course, one mustn't judge, only try to acknowledge the pain of those in the throes of this torment. I wish you strength in your struggle, Kansas O'Flaherty-haters. Remember, you can reclaim your dignity, reclaim your lives, and conquer this need. Think of your loved ones, think of a better time to come — a time when comics you loathe have no power over you.
You can do it!
-
Tragic, indeed...
>Surely the only thing worse is the tragic compulsion to then spend additional precious minutes of one's life writing a letter detailing exactly how one feels.<
Second Rule O' The Internets: if you put your sorry business (in this case, lousy work) in the street, the street has _every_ right to talk about your sorry business. Third Rule O' Life: if you let people get away with lousy work, they 1) won't improve; 2) will continue on secure in the delusion that they are doing good work. And as other posters have pointed out, for this comic to have even run in the first place bespeaks some serious favoritism going on here. Do you really think a first-time cartoonist with no credentials would have gotten this kind of break? And why couldn't SALON have picked up any of the innumerable good, lesser-known comics that have at least proved themselves? SALON has pulled this kind of "we and our elite crew got props and you don't" crap before in selecting material (Ayelet Waldman, anyone?) and for a supposedly liberal magazine there's no excuse for that mess.
>I wish you strength in your struggle, Kansas O'Flaherty-haters. Remember, you can reclaim your dignity, reclaim your lives, and conquer this need. Think of your loved ones, think of a better time to come — a time when comics you loathe have no power over you.<
Well, I would, but I've got DEXTER episodes to catch up on, thanks...:).
-
Walkouts
Kansas O. haters are like my old friend Betsy who would go to the movies, and then walk out within the first 10 or 15 minutes. The characters would barely be introduced and she'd start snorting, grumbling and then get up and leave. She was a good friend, but an annoying asshole and cultural snob when it came to movies.
-
TONI SCHLESINGER KILLED MY DOG
What is so hard about skipping the comic and moving on with your life?
-
What makes a good comic?
You know, I'm going to keep complaining, not just because I hate Kansas O'Flaherty (though I do) but because I actually love and care about comics.
Dear Salon Editors-
I was super excited when I read that you were introducing a serial adventure comic. I LOVE serial adventure comics. As I posted earlier, I'm an aspiring cartoonist myself. I regularly devour the great Terry and the Pirates, Wash Tubbs, Scorchy Smith, etc.
The problem is that the creators of Kansas O'Flaherty clearly do not know anything about comics or cartooning, and assume that because they know how to write, or how to make illustrations, they can make comics. Its insulting--its the perception that comics are some "lower" medium, fit for children, that must be easy to write. Instead, all they are showing is their lack of ability to pace, to create dynamic visuals, to tell a cohesive story.
Toni Schlesinger has no ability to write a comic that moves from panel to panel in a logical manner. Tom Bachtell has no ability to draw clearly-depicted narrative action.
To add to the list of webcomics that people are suggesting as replacements, I highly, highly recommend
TRANSMISSION-X
http://www.transmission-x.com/
ACT-I-VATE
http://community.livejournal.com/act_i_vate/
two collectives of artists producing weekly comics that pretty much all rule, and are made with evident love and care for the craft of storytelling, instead of the disdain and hate that Schlesinger and Bachtell evince.
Compare those comics to KOF.
-
Seriously
Let us in on the joke? Or is it that this only works within six blocks of Tribeca? Because, wow, this is like a speed rant, and not in a fun way.
It's kinda insulting me, actually. I'm too dumb and uncool to get your witty inside banter.
No wait. It's the other way around. The writer is too dumb and uncool to remember the audience.
No wait. It's both! I get it now!
-
Stop it. Please. Now.
I have been polite in my previous letters. It doesn't seem to have worked.
So: Stop publishing this... Garbage. Trash. Rubbish.
I can't stand it. It gets worse every week. Increasingly incoherent and uglier. I'm a paying subscriber. I'm paying for quality, not for this. I don't know anyone who'd pay for this, apart from Salon it seems. I don't care if you paid for 6 strips, or 8 strips, or whatever. Just stop publishing it.