Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent, absurd, and subtilely twisted
Review: If your were a college student of the 70's this work will hit the spot. I know what I was doing when reading it - you find your own 'mood maker'. This, along with Kilban's Whack Your Porcupine, is the most hilarious cartoon book I have ever seen. Larson et.al. should thank the publishers of Kilban for not promoting this true genius half well enough. If you didn't laugh when the coconut clappers came over the hill in Monty Python's "Holy Grail' perhaps you should find another read!
Rating: 
Summary: Seminal work this area of humor
Review: If your were a college student of the 70's this work will hit the spot. I know what I was doing when reading it - you find your own 'mood maker'. This, along with Kilban's Whack Your Porcupine, is the most hilarious cartoon book I have ever seen. Larson et.al. should thank the publishers of Kilban for not promoting this true genius half well enough. If you didn't laugh when the coconut clappers came over the hill in Monty Python's "Holy Grail' perhaps you should find another read!
Rating:
Summary: Contaminated Pork Bldg.
Review: Kliban was definitely one of the best. I discovered his work in used book stores and was hooked the moment I saw it. What started was a manic tour to find all of his books. Next was convincing everyone I knew at the time that Kliban was a genius. Some bought, some flinched. 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.
Rating:
Summary: Intelligent, absurd, and subtilely twisted
Review: Kliban's cartoon style is a predecessor of Gary Larsen's. However, what Larsen's work doesn't contain is the underground-type of absurdity that Kliban's work does. Some of the cartoons are hilarious, some show his eye for the art of cartooning (i.e. exaggeration of certain key traits), and some make fun of cartoonists or humor in general (you look at them and say, "wait a second, that wasn't funny" - which is exactly why it IS funny - because it's very aware of the way humor works in our society and is exaggerating that in a funny way). The reasons that it is good are exactly those that you can't express through words, because a lot of the cartoons don't have "punchlines"; they're just funny because you imagine him drawing the pictures and because you find yourself laughing without knowing exactly why. Of course, it's not for everybody. One good example of his comic-style is called "Debutants and Centipedes". It shows 6 frames, some of them containing snotty-looking people, and some of them containing centipedes.
Rating:
Summary: The best ever
Review: Kliban's genius lies in the fact that he was always more than a cartoonist (as his satirical pictures of cartoonists made clear); he was a surreal visionary of quotidian absurdity. 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.
Rating:
Summary: The best ever
Review: Kliban's genius lies in the fact that he was always more than a cartoonist (as his satirical pictures of cartoonists made clear); he was a surreal visionary of quotidian absurdity. 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.
Rating:
Summary: BEAUTIFUL!
Review: Kliban's humor views to the unenlightened as pointless and strange, but that's what makes it so wonderful! It's absolutely NOT surface laughs-- Three Stooges, popular cinematic comedies, and almost all mainstream comics. To understand, and better yet, APPRECIATE Kliban's work, one must possess a sophisticated mindset and be completely at ease with their personal humor. My opinion is backed by years of frivilous research.
Rating:
Summary: You either get it or you don't
Review: The first time you look at a book of Kliban drawings, you will spend ten minutes bemusedly turning pages. After that first ten minutes you'll either put the book down and never touch Kilban again or else you'll be hooked for life on the world's most surprising, delightful, profane, ailurophilic, and rewarding cartoonist.
Fans of "B.C." and "Family Circus" need not apply.
Rating:
Summary: Boffo Belly Laughs!
Review: The funniest cartoonist ever. Fact. Having said that, you might be one of those people that flick through the book bewildered thinking, "...I don't get it!?!" If you do - unlucky!
Rating:
Summary: Uniquely demented satire that goes beyond the norm
Review: There are many styles and many approaches to the tickling of the funnybone. But never in my relenless quest to laugh have I come across a cartoonist as unique and pleasantly surreal as the works of B Kliban. His usual one frame cartoons, in my opinion, set the pace for many other forms of satire and is at the top of the list as far as a picture is worth a thousand words. The man has an uncanny ability to leave the "reader" laughing even if he/she does not know quite what he she is laughing at. You can take his works in two ways. One, try to find some meaning in his art I.E satirical value or implications. Or you might simply laugh at the visualizations he portrays. Either way its easy to laugh at a man who so essentially captures the nature of mans most beloved domesticated creature, the cat. Some recommended works that are my favorites include "Cat", "Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head", and my favorite "Whack Your Porcupine". For a taste of something that goes beyond the innocence of Larson yet equals him in Originality, check out Kliban's work. You will be pleasantly surprised.
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