Bill Mauldin’s Transformative Work During WWII

Welcome to the first installment of Funday Sunnies, my new blog devoted to my odd thoughts, observations, meditations and meanderings related to cartoon and comic strip art. 

I consider Bill Mauldin to be one of the most influential cartoonists of the 20th century, coming into WWII as a kid cartoonist and leaving the Mediterranean Theater as someone who changed the way cartoonists depicted war, mixing reality and black humor to add human depth to his characters and their surroundings.  Mauldin, I believe, also had a profound impact on the famed EC war comics, Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, as most of the EC artists were WWII vets and saw Mauldin’s work throughout the war.  The Jack Davis (beautifully art directed by Harvey Kurtzman) story MUD, from Two-Fisted Tales #25, was a homage to Mauldin’s depiction of the vile material that soldiers faced during WWII.   And think about the TV show M*A*S*H*.  So much of the black humor from that show was clearly derived from the humor and insights found in Mauldin’s Up Front.  One scene with Harry Morgan, depicting Col. Sherman Potter shooting his Jeep, was appropriated directly from one of Mauldin’s most famous Up Front cartoons.

I've long been interested in Mauldin's transformation as an artist, from one who wielded some good pen and ink, to an artist who found his visual voice rather quickly with brush and ink. I have 10 different Mauldin cartoons here (along with a couple of bonus cartoons), covering a period of approximately six months, from late 1943 to mid-1944. It's rather breathtaking to see Mauldin’s transformation, as he matured as both a person and an artist.

 Stars and Stripes, December 16, 1943. Mauldin was not yet assigned to Stars and Stripes on a permanent basis at this point, as he was still doing work for the 45^th Division News, but you could see the development characters as they started to take the shape that the public would become so familiar with. This cartoon is done entirely with pen and ink.  Mauldin was a competent pen and ink artist, with good volume in his figures and a nice sense of texture.  You can see how Mauldin breaks down information such as clothing folds into shapes. They function a bit like folds, but in some ways give the impression of patterns.  There’s lots of hatching, scribbling and a bit of stippling in the helmets, to add texture to the surface.

Stars and Stripes, December 22, 1943.  Six days later, Mauldin breaks out the brush for this panel featuring Willie and Joe.  Mauldin was no stranger to the brush, but at this point he was using it as a way of laying down a fairly generic contour line and blocking in the shadows as relatively flat shapes. The folds in the clothing function better as high contrast shapes that create some movement in the drawing.  Likewise, Mauldin creates some nice contrast behind the figures with the dark spaces.  We do see some brush hatching in the rock formations and some pen stippling on the helmets, but the texture is kept to a minimum.

 Stars and Stripes, January 1, 1944. In this first drawing of the New Year in 1944, and about a week after the previous image, Mauldin is using all brush, except on the helmet. Rather than using the brush to convey the contour line and shadows, Mauldin incorporates a fair amount of dry-brush effect, not a technique he employed very often. The folds in the clothing, as before, are handled as fairly solid triangular shapes, conveying more of a sense of pattern than weight of the figure.  The texture in the landscape elements of the drawing are quite lively, especially Mauldin’s handling of the foliage.

Stars and Stripes, January 11, 1944. Ten days later, you start to see a more confident and more expressive brush line from Mauldin. This is a few weeks from Mauldin being permanently assigned to Stars and Stripes, and it has been noted that Ed Vebell convinced Mauldin to work exclusively with the brush.  Maybe we’re starting to see Vebell’s encouragement pay off.  Mauldins employs a more active brush line in this piece, with lots of variation in the hatching, from scribbling on the tires, to some lush textures created on the wall and spaces. We can still see that solidity in the folds on the clothing, but Mauldin is bringing in more curves and a bit more liveliness to those folds, especially in Joe’s arm at the right edge of the drawing.

 Stars and Stripes, January 15, 1944. Now we're talking. At first glance this Up Front panel appears to be a rather quickly executed piece, but look at those brush lines! Instead of using flat black shapes to create the folds, Mauldin is starting to use the folds in a cross-contour sort of way, creating volume with fewer, more expressive means.   The brush line has life to it, more along and around the figures. 

Speaking of life, look at that mud!  Mauldin knew mud.  Here’s what he wrote about it in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Up Front:

"Mud, for one, is a curse which seems to save itself for war. I'm sure Europe never got this muddy during peacetime. I'm equally sure that no mud in the world is so deep or sticky or wet as European mud. It doesn't even have an honest color like ordinary mud." Mauldin continued, "The worst thing about mud, outside of the fact that it keeps armies from advancing, is that it causes trench foot. There was a lot of it that first winter in Italy. The doggies found it difficult to keep their feet dry, and they had to stay in wet foxholes for days and weeks at a time. If they couldn't stand the pain, they crawled out of their holes and stumbled and crawled (they couldn't walk) down the mountains until they reached the aid station. Their shoes were cut off, and their feet swelled like balloons. Sometimes the feet had to be amputated. But most often the men had to make their agonized way back up the mountain and crawl into their holes again because there were no replacements and the line had to be held."

Mauldin wrote about trying to capture the quality of the mud, by having to draw it from life. He said that it couldn't be experienced in the studio.  Even Snoopy knew that Mauldin knew mud, as seen in this Peanuts daily from November 11, 1992:

Stars and Stripes, January 27, 1944. Mauldin is really starting to hit his stride here.  He’s allowing the brush to carve out that wonderful foreground space, as well as creating the rainy atmosphere.  You still get a small bit of pen work in the stippling on the helmets, but everything else is done with brush, and that brush line is adding expressive energy to the work.

Stars and Stripes, February 6, 1944. Now check out these clothing folds!  No longer simple flat shapes laid in with solid black, but Mauldin is using brushwork to create shadows and mass that describe the human form in an almost architectural way. When you look at Mauldin’s delineation of clothing folds, also consider Will Eisner’s approach.  It’s quite possible that Eisner picked up a thing or two from Mauldin when it came to wielding a brush.

 Will Eisner, Spirit, November 19, 1946

 Stars and Stripes, March 4, 1944. A rather sparse drawing, less is really more in this case.  Mauldin allows the brush work to focus on the figures, briefly setting up the foreground.  In the previous month’s drawing, you could see Mauldin’s quickly developing understanding of drapery.  In this piece, the clothing folds have so much life with so few means. The brush dances around the figures’ arms and legs in cross-contour fashion.  Check out the lower legs of the soldier in the background.  The density of the brush work creates almost sculptural forms.

 Stars and Stripes, March 31, 1944. Here's Mauldin having a field day with brush and ink, slapping it and slathering it all over the drawing. You can see that he's no longer dealing with stippling as a way of showing the texture on the helmets, but he’s allowing the brush to show the weight of the helmet, foregoing a bit of texture in the process. This allows brushwork there to now start fitting in with the rest of the drawing. You can also see how Mauldin loved drawing legs, with the wonderful cross-contour folds and lines.  The scribbled brush work in the lower half of the drawing adds a tremendous amount of atmosphere to the piece.

Stars and Stripes, May 27, 1944. Here is the last example I have as part of Mauldin’s remarkable transformation. It’s classic Mauldin with so much confidence exuding from that brush. Every mark in this Up Front cartoon is important and just look at how Mauldin is varying the tones in such a seemingly easy manner. Six months from competent to incredible. Not too bad.

BONUS IMAGES! 

45^th Division News, January 8, 1944.  This piece is scanned from the original artwork in my collection. All pen and ink. You can see how Mauldin’s understanding of the figure is developing here.  Nice mass in the shadows and weight in the forms.  Much more texture than we’ll see later on.

Stars and Stripes, August 21, 1944.  More classic Mauldin. Sure, this one goes outside of my six-month timespan, but who cares?  Brilliant stuff by a brilliant artist.