Letters to the Editor
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Kansas O'Flaherty...
...still sucks
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vaporland
I was hoping to be the first one in, but you beat me to it.
Beni is back. At least we know now that all of the characters do not merely vanish into thin air. Unfortunately, we don't know what the hell else is going on. Cliffhangers are fine, but this is a huge groaner.....
The title of the book Beni is reading (by Benazir Bhutto! Get it? Beni? Beni from PAKISTAN? Get it? Get it?) might be worth a feeble titter. I'm not sure. And when I'm not sure, that gets in the way of me laughing, and then it's not funny.
Week after week, I notice the characters are very uninteresting in appearance. I don't know if it's the expressionlessness, or what the heck. It also seems as though several different styles of drawing are in use at one time (did anyone catch that waitress's pseudo-cubist head last week?). This hurts my eyes and makes me surly.
Lodging my official weekly complaint, and signing out.
Hate It. Kill It.
Following Vaporland and myself will be 60 posts saying the same thing, with one poster saying that we shouldn't take the time to write in if we hate it sooooooooooooo much. This scold will get the single red star of the thread.
I'm telling you now, just so you know.
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HOW MUCH LONGER
must we suffer this crap?! Still poorly written, still poorly drawn, still lacks any sense of continuity, still lacks any sense of narrative motion, still full of smarmy, irritatingly self-consciously "hip" references, still complete and utter SHITE.
The question has been raised in every letters section since this steaming turd showed up on Salon, "WHY?" And yet, still no answers. Really, does anyone actually *enjoy* this... well, hell I don't feel right calling it a comic, because that implies a certain, baseline literacy and quality.
Seriously, Salon, please quit insulting your readers with this f*cking piece of smug shit. As others have (repeatedly, ad infinitum, ad nauseam) said, there are MUCH better web comix that Salon's readership might actually *enjoy* spending time with, unlike Krappy Un'Funny, which just makes me want to simultaneously defecate and vomit each time I read it.
KILL IT! MAKE IT GO AWAY! PLEASE! WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE READERS?!
Otto E. Roddick
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Consider for a moment...
...what this week's "episode" would look like to someone who had never seen this strip before. With at least half a brain, this person would think there must be a greater meaning beyond the aridity of these four panels. With a little curiosity, he or she might go back and read through from the beginning.
No answers there.
But if that person's curiosity were strong enough, the letters section might get a perusal.
Suddenly it gets interesting.
Now let's imagine that person had been considering subscribing to Salon...
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Still clueless
Tom Bachtell still has no idea about the mechanics of drawing a comic, even though any number of people have suggested reference books for him to use (such as Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics).
A case in point: in the second panel, the "RING" sound effect appears below and to the right of the dialog balloon; this conveys the impression that the phone rang after Beni answered it.
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I didn't think it was possible, but they pulled it off
They made it worse.
I actually went back to last week's strip to be sure the hunky guy Kansas seemed to know so well was actually the Joe who was "the fraud".
Guess those weren't lobsters he was packing--maybe just jumbo shrimp?
My kid did a better cartoon book when he was eight years old. And he did the drawing AND the dialog.
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Someone should...
Do their own rendition of KOF that makes sense, even if it has to be stick figures :-)
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Okay, a decent try at some suspense...
...but since most of us are rooting for the villains/Joe/Schlomo anyway, it's too little too late...:P
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YATTA!
I did it! I found answers!
OK, I've been reading this strip since it started and like everyone else I haven't been able to make sense of it, but I think I've stumbled upon a clue, quite by accident.
Last week's strip ended with reference to the Danvers 'Asylym.' Ignore the typo, it's a red herring. Anyway, I've been reading a collection of HP Lovecraft stories and a couple days ago I came upon reference to an actual Danvers Asylum somewhere in New England. It was torn down a couple years ago (according to Wikipedia, which is always right), but it was around in Lovecraft's time.
Now I don't believe in coincidence much, but I couldn't see any other connection besides this offhand reference. Not a direct connection, at least, so I filed the point away for future use, then realized its importance only recently. There are two Lovecraft stories that I need to mention here: Whisperer in Darkness and Shadow Over Innsmouth.
I read Whisperer first, it was enjoyable but I thought the final ending came a bit weak (and easily telegraphed). Then I read Shadow Over Innsmouth, a much superior work.
When I started reading today's strip I thought back to how last week's strip and the one before featured a man in a seaside town harvesting the bounty of the ocean (in this case, lobsters). Now, in Innsmouth there's a plot point that the fishers there always bring in huge loads, even when other areas on the coast don't get as many fish.
Why? Because the people of Innsmouth made a deal with the Deep Ones, an elder race of fish/frog-people, which included ritual sacrifice.
That alone doesn't bring us straight to K'OF, but then I remembered that Whisperer in Darkness featured a race of CRUSTACEAN beings, like say, I don't know, LOBSTERS!?!
So this seaport dweller K'OF goes to meet lives in a town blessed with an abundance of sea creatures for harvest. That alone is fishy (pardon the pun), but read the letters from last week's strip and notice a point brought up: the man's face doesn't look like an actual face, but a mask. Now read Whisperer in Darkness, or if you're too lazy, read this SPOILER:
The man the narrator had been in correspondance with was replaced by someone wearing a mask to look like him.
END SPOILER!
And this week we find out the guy is a fake. Maybe his mask slipped off (I don't give K'OF enough credit to realize it was a mask).
So here's the plot of the strip: Shlomo is an agent of an elder race of crustacean beings that worship the Great Old One Dagon, and he's trying to lure K'OF into some diabolical plot. Perhaps sacrificing her to Dagon for more lobster (even though lobster is not kosher by Orthodox standards, if I remember correctly).
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Now, there is the question why do we read this when we can't understand it (until now)? The answer is also found in Lovecraft. Another story of his, the Colour Out of Space, involves a meteorite bringing an ancient evil to a farm. The evil seeps into the ground, changing the plant life and leeching energy from the animals and people living nearby. It drives them to illness, madness, and eventually death.
The farmer at one point mentions he know the land is cursed now, and that he's dying, but he can't get away. Something is holding him there, some power of an ancient, cosmic source. Something he is too weak to flee.
Just like how we are too weak to flee the evil of K'OF. The people behind this strip are in league with the editors of Salon to take away our very souls and hold them up to the Old Ones for their own ends!
It is all in Lovecraft! All the answer we seek can be found in his works, it's so obvious! Warn everyone!