Editors Note: Welcome to the debut of "Kansas," a weekly graphic serial adventure story about the global exploits of secret agent Kansas O'Flaherty and her bomb-sniffing dog Alerto. Check back every Tuesday for the latest on Kansas; her torrid affair with Shlomo, a Mossad agent;
Beni, a former Cirque du Soleil acrobat who
performs legal break-ins; Aunt Bea, who in her youth had an affair with British double agent Kim Philby; and the rest of the gang.
"Kansas" creator Toni Schlesinger is the former author of the award-winning "Shelter" column in the Village Voice. She and longtime New
Yorker magazine illustator Tom Bachtell began their collaboration with the "Search for Nightlife" column in 1990 in the Chicago Reader.
Carol Lay's "WayLay" will now appear on Salon on Fridays.
About the creators
Toni Schlesinger, creator and writer of "Kansas," is a New York-based journalist, fiction writer, theater artist and columnist, most recently for the New York Observer and for eight years for the Village Voice where she originated and wrote her award-winning "Shelter" column, which was collected along with new essays in her book "Five Flights Up" -- the inside life of New York -- published by Princeton Architectural Press.
Tom Bachtell, longtime New Yorker magazine illustrator, and swing dancer, and pianist, created the drawings for "When I Knew" (Robert Trachtenberg, editor, HarperCollins -- Lambda Literary Award Finalist). His work also has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, the New York Observer, Time, Newsweek, Town & Country, and Entertainment Weekly.
E-mail the creators at kansas@salon.com.
