A lengthy CIDU in six laborious parts.
Last Friday’s discussion about “Cornish Lobster” prompted a comment from beckoningchasm about Kliban’s “Cornish Game Clams“. I never read the book “Two Guys Fooling Around with the Moon” and had never heard of this sequence, but I soon discovered that it was hiding in plain sight at GoComics (starting on 11-Feb-2013).
Whether or not this was worth the effort is a question that CIDU readers will have to decide: I don’t understand what is going on in these comics at all (and it may just be random surrealism). Discussion is welcome (YMMV).
Comics I Don't Understand 
I’m kind of bemused but I think the subtitle, “A False Start in Six Parts,” is the entire joke. Each panel jogs the protagonist’s memory of a story that never gets resolved, because that story’s setup starts a new one. The surrealism seems incidental.
I think Andrew is right. “Surreal” and “Kliban” are sort of synonymous, after all. I’d be unsurprised to find that there’s some language where “Kliban” is the accepted word for “surreal”. Hmm…”Klibanistic”–I like it! Or would it be “Klibanous”? “Klibanic”? No, that sounds like a movie about a ship…
Ah, the uncommon multi panel Kliban comic! I believe Andrew Millar above has it, though diving into surrealism and leaving things open to the reader’s interpretation is pretty par for the course for Kilban, cats or no cats.
A propos de nothing at all, I miss Walter Mitty.
It makes me think of The Firesign Theatre’s “Nick Danger, Third Eye.”
Nick: That tarnished piece of tin is worthless!
Rocky: Worthless? Ha ha ha! Not to Melanie Haber!
Nick: Melanie Haber?
Rocky: You may remember her as … Audrey Farber?
Nick: Audrey Farber?
Rocky: How about … Betty Jo Bialowski!
Nick: [thinking] Betty Jo Bialowski! I hadn’t heard that name since college. Everyone knew her as Nancy. Then it all came running back to me like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist. It was Pig Night at the Om Mani Padme Sigma House…
I was hoping it was recursive, where after a set of flashbacks and digressions, the last panel would recall the first one as a flashback, leaving a closed loop of weirdness.
Let’s learn three new words in Turkish.
Towel
Bath
Border
May I see your passport please
My reaction was basically, “I am too lazy to try to read that terrible lettering. Oh, well.”
Mark has it: It’s almost like Firesign Theatre’s loopy lunacy as line art.
Mitch, your memory is mighty close to the opening of Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him:
This is side 5. Follow in your book and repeat after me, as we learn three new words in Turkish: Towel. Bath. Border. May I see your passport please?
*****
Hurry … over here … this way … that’s it. You’ve made it. Welcome to side 6. Follow in your book and repeat after me as we learn our next three words in Turkish: Coffee. Delight. Border. May I see your passport please?
Apologies to Samuel Beckett.
@ LVL 9 – I liked “Waiting for the Electrician…”, but it was the only Firesign album my parents had, and it wasn’t quite enough to encourage me to look for (or pay for) another one myself. I don’t remember the “Turkish“† interlude, just now I’m trying to reconstruct a sequence that led to “polyunsaturated ghee” and/or “beer nuts“.
P.S. Now that they have changed the official orthography, are we supposed to write “Türkiyeish“?
Kilby, the “Waiting for the Electrician” album had several different skits (if we can call them that), each with its own title. The one sharing the title of the album starts with the recorded language lesson passage that Vieux Lapin and I were recalling.
“Turkey” or “Türkiye” is a country name. “Turkish” is descriptive of a nationality, an ethnicity, or a language. Only in the former case (nationality) could I see a justification for changing the orthography, and even then it would be to “Türkish” not “Türkiyeish”.
@ Powers (12) – The orthographical comment wasn’t meant seriously, I guess I should have attached a smiley to it. 😉
P.S. @ Mitch (11) – Our copy of the album was on vinyl, and the last time I saw it was over four decades ago. I seriously doubt whether anyone in the family has kept it.
I have to admit to still calling it “The Czech Republic”.
As long as we are on the subject of “clams”, here is a pair of classic “B.C.” strips:
(I wasn’t able to find the first one in the original monochrome.)
With almost all of Kliban, it’s just supposed to be bizarre and off-kilter.
@ Mitch (14) – I would stick with “Czech Republic“, it’s far more recognizable. Attempting to mandate the new form “Czechia” was simply a bad idea, especially because of the similarity to “Chechnya“. Perhaps “Czeska” would have been a more viable option.
P.S. Another example of misbegotten renaming is “Ivory Coast” insisting on its old imperialistic title “Côte d’Ivoire“.