One of my favorite cartoonists is the unforgettable Bernard Kliban (B. Kliban, as per his signature) whose unique cats always make me laugh.
The other day, my wife wondered: Could it be that Kliban is of Czech descent? She was asking because there is another amazing cartoonist, Miroslav Bartak, whose irreverent humor is not altogether unlike Kliban’s. Indeed, as anyone who read the story of The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek can testify, there is something uniquely funny about Czech humor… and at least some of Kliban’s cats do remind us of that humor.
So I checked, and… close. Kliban was born in the US, of course, but the family name apparently is a Jewish name of Western Ukrainian origin. So perhaps the cultural roots of Messrs. Bartak and Kliban are not that far apart after all.