Bill Mauldin

Bill Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, New Mexico, in 1921, and started drawing young. He took a few courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and, in 1940 entered the Army and was assigned as an illustrator for the military's newspaper, The Stars & Stripes. He created two characters for which he will always be remembered: a pair of plain, tired but determined infantrymen named Willie and Joe. The two clicked with the average GI almost immediately, one of the reasons being that the brass hated them. Gen. George S. Patton despised them and tried to have the panel removed (and Mauldin court-martialed), but they became so incredibly popular among GIs that Time magazine actually featured them on its cover, and eventually Patton relented. After the war Mauldin did a panel for United Features Syndicate featuring Willie's and Joe's trials at home, dealing with social issues and attacking the Red Scare hysteria and the paranoia of the McCarthy era. In 1949 Mauldin was hired by the St. Loui