Congrats to ADDTF for one solid year of reading comics naked.

Also, welcome back ADD and In Sequence.

Did I miss anyone?

 
Bill Mauldin 1921 - 2003



I honestly didn't think I had any tears left in me. What a bad week to be a fan of the comics.



Mauldin's Willie and Joe strips ran in the US Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and were a godsend to the grunts in the field. Willie and Joe's unkempt appearance and abandonment of Army regulations were so effective they brought on the criticism of General Patton himself, not to mention a Pulitzer prize.



The dogfaced soldier never forgot what Mauldin did for them. One soldier in particular, Sgt. Charles Schulz, paid tribute to Mauldin every Veteran's Day by having Snoopy visit Mauldin for a root beer. The strip shown above is the only time that anyone other than Schulz ever had a hand in the creation of a Peanuts strip, such was his respect for the artist.



After the war, Mauldin devoted himself to political cartooning, and excelled in that field as well, winning his second Pulitzer. The above cartoon, drawn on the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination, is perhaps the most famous and imitated political cartoon of all time.

When I mentioned Mauldin and Hirschfeld's passings to a friend, a fellow comic fan, he brushed them off and responded that they were before his time. It's a shame that there's so little sense of history in the comic community for people who worked outside of four-coloured fantasies. I highly recommend anything you can get your hands on, including Up Front, his collection of WWII cartoons, and The Brass Ring, one of the most entertaining of the dozens of cartoonist biographies I have read. These, and other works by Mauldin, can often be found in your local library.

News on his passing can be found here and here.

Update

Journalista was nice enough to mention my pictorial eulogy, but nothing says it better than the link to the San Jose Mercury News that Dirk provides. It is a collection of exerpts from letters written to Mauldin from World War II veterans during his recent illness.

"You can't believe how the men wounded or sightless would look forward to Willie and Joe because that was their life at the time." - Joe Carrigan, 77, of Lombard, Ill., who worked at field hospitals in Europe and would describe the cartoon to the wounded and then read the caption.

"One summer, I discovered a copy of your book 'Up Front' on my grandparents' bookshelf and read it cover to cover in an afternoon. I must admit it was the cartoons that attracted me at first, but once I read the text, I felt like I understood a little of what my grandfather had been through." - Mark S. Richardson, 31, Raleigh, N.C.


posted by Steven at 1:34 AM

 
Al Hirschfeld 1903-2003



Whenever someone would ask me who my favourite living cartoonist was, I never had any hesitation. Now, I don't know what I'll say.



Playbill and the New York Times (registration required) have the story. To sample a wide range of drawings by Mr. Hirschfeld, please check out his website.

Rest in peace, Al.




posted by Steven at 6:40 PM