Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head & Other Drawings (Paperback)

I remember when I discovered Kliban. (Doubtless every fan remembers this moment, because it was a moment when his whole comic universe shifted irrevocably.) It was the night I turned fifteen: at my birthday party, a friend gave me Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head. None of us had ever heard of Kliban - my friend had bought it on a whim - but as three of us sat there in the corner and read the book together, we began to laugh, then to howl, and finally to cry; then we read it again; and again. The next week I brought it school and soon we had memorized every drawing in the book.

Over the years what can only be described as a Kliban cult developed among my circle of friends, where we would delight in observing "Klibanesque" moments in the "real" world. Fifteen years later, we still take pleasure in citing Kliban at appropriate moments. I remember once sitting in Pamplona, Spain, competing for an hour with a friend to see who could cite more Kliban cartoons; we finally declared a truce.

Kliban was a seer - his humor caused you to realize that real world was actually more bizarre than even the biggest trippers had ever realized; in a way, his cartoons were perfectly postmodern: the more you read them, the more they began to seem realistic and the usual attempts to depict reality began to seem fraudulent. Like good philosophy and bad drugs, it was only once you get into the habit that you realized you couldn't (and didn't want to) escape.

Quintessentially visual, Kliban's humor was unexcelled at what might be described as visual wordplay. How can one possibly explain the humor of comparing "cucumbers and asparagus" with a "cumbersome apparatus"? (As Kliban observed with mock-paranoia, it was "More than a coincidence.") Only someone too comfortable with reality could fail to see the hilarity of his bizarre juxtaposition of peculiar vegetables with a nonsensical mechanism.

Kliban's humor instructed me to observe sublimity in everyday banality. Just the other day I had a Kliban Experience: driving past a Hardw store in Oakland, CA, I observed an obscenely fat man sitting on the back of an empty pickup truck with a huge, badly painted sign that read "Free Bricks." It wasn't funny by itself, but when I thought of Kliban painting than scene, I almost had a fit. Kliban had worldview - and it was far more profoundly, insightfully, and savagely disturbed than the puerile animal fantasies of Gary Larson.

Kliban awaits rediscovery - one day in the future, his fiendish genius will be recognized as on par with Andy Warhol. One day some enterprising young art historian will make her name explaining Kliban.

If the weirder things get, the more you enjoy them, then Kliban is cartoonist for you.

Kliban's work would have no home in today's "funny pages." It's entertainment for adults (he began his career with Playboy magazine) and his work is scattered with obscenity and nudity. None of it is gratuitous. One thing that heavily separates Kliban's work from other cartoonists' is its depth. Social commentary mixed with metaphysics mixed with surrealism. When he's funny he's gut-wrenchingly funny. When he's profound he's deeply profound (not many cartoonists' work can be called 'profound'). He also uses the pun in a way I've never seen before. He either goes over the top and makes you gag(e.g., "Why do you hang out with that sadist?" "Beats me!"), or is very subtle and hilarious (e.g., A buffalo saying "I never met an Indian I didn't like, with the possible exception of Kahlil Gibran"). His work is nonsensical, absurd and funny.

This book includes classics such as "The Birth of Advertising", "Patron Saint of Crullers", "Contaminated Pork Bldg", "The Hairy Family Singers", "Continuous Eye Persons", "Philosophers Looting a Small Town", and many others that defy description.

Kliban's closest equivalent in cartooning must be Argentina's Quino. If you're a fan of Kliban, most likely you'll appreciate Quino's work (though some knowledge of Spanish is helpful).

Sadly, a lot of Kliban's work is difficult to find these days. His "safer" books like "Cat" are readily available, but his more edgy work seems to have nearly vanished. Perhaps someday if mainstream humor revisits off-the-wall absurdism Kliban's work will be appreciated for what it was.