Kliban - 1963

Not the greatest cartoon ever...but an early example of his penmanship from 1963. His cartoon drawing style changed quite rapidly within a few years.

I know precious little biographical information about Kliban, and its a pity, as there's plenty of biographies out there about people less deserving. Come to think of it, there are few biographies of cartoonists in general.

I own a few books that he wrote foreword's for, and I'll post scans of them sometime.

So who is Sgt. Pepper?

I like looking through old music and literary magazines, especially those from the 1960's. Its interesting to read contemporary reviews of albums, books and movies in their original context before the subsequently mythologising over subsequent decades. You can also find references to some lost nuggets too.

This neat advert is taken from International Times, 2-June 1967,  just one day after Sgt. Pepper was released. Its seems proposterous to me that anyone could not know who was behind the Sgt. Pepper album. Clearly, the marketing team at EMI were worried that the IT reading hippies might forget.

I reckon this might make a good T-Shirt design.

Advert in IT, 2-June-1967

Kliban..Cats not included

One of my favouite cartoonists is Bernard Kliban and I wanted to cover some of his lesser known works in this post.

He's probably best known for his Cat-series of books and spin-off merchandise, which made him a very wealthy man, but is in my opinion, the least interesting examples of his prodigious output.

Here's a photo of his non-Cat books from my collection - built up over a period of a year-or-so, some time ago. I'm glad I got them when I did as some are becoming increasingly scarce. There are atleast 2 unpublished volumes that I know of : Dancers (planned 1999) and a retropective "Art of B. Kliban" by Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner (planned 2005). The latter title has been in my Amazon wish-list for 8+years, so I'm not holding out any hope that it'll ever get published.

Kliban's non-Cat books

Image from the unpublished "Art of B. Kliban"

As well as the published books there probably another couple of books-worth of uncollected cartoons dotted amongst various publications. I'm sure the Playboy volumes don't collect together his entire Playboy output (1964-1980+), and his early work also appears in Nexus, New Yorker, Punch and Evergreen Review. I'm sure that it'd be quite a task to track down all these various cartoons.

In addition, there is his commercial advertising work, LP covers and psychedelic 60's posters too. The unpublished "Art of B. Kliban" hints at further self-portraits, but I don't know if these have ever been exhibited or published elsewhere.

There are plenty of great cartoon images over at : http://www.coldbacon.com/kliban2.html

And a rare uncollected cartoon from Evergreen Review, June 1968 can be seen here :

http://themagicwhistle.blogspot.com/2010/11/evergreen.html

Lastly, here are some examples of more cartoons and artwork, not found elsewhere.

Cool psychedelic poster. 1967

David Bromberg LP, 1977



Advert, 1968

Poster, 1967

Poster, 1968





Enid Blyton's Gay Story Book (1952)

Enid Blyton - addressing gender-issues for younger readers?

I'm often to be found browsing bookshops and now that I carry a smartphone with me, I can record some of the wierd and wonderful titles I find by accident. This was found at a bookshop in Leicester.

Perhaps time has come for it to be re-published with its original title?

She had a interesting private life too....