Mauldin Dons His Mufti, 1945-1949
"What Bill did was a kind of storytelling. The
equivalent of what Raymond Carver might do in a short story, he
did in a cartoon. It was a storytelling on the page that went beyond
the dimensions of the editorial cartoon." - Jules Feiffer
People, not just the soldiers who
were the most familiar with his work, embraced Mauldin after the
war. At first Mauldin stuck to cartoons dealing with Willie and
Joe's reentry into American culture. But soon the editorial opinions
that shaped Mauldin's work during the war evidenced themselves in
single-panel cartoons that appeared on the comics page. Mauldin's
opinions were not shaped by academics but by the experience of war,
when had used his cartoons to expose inequality between officers
and combatants in the army. He apparently had been unafraid of General
Patton during the war, and continued his hard-headed attacks on
the FBI, Joseph McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee,
and the Ku Klux Klan afterwards.
Newspaper feature editors, disinterested in his political edge,
quickly dropped his United Features Syndicate cartoon, Back
Home. Mauldin, however, remained relentless in his attacks
on oppression. If anything, the decline in publication only made
him more fearless. In 1948 United Feature Syndicate ceased publication
of Back Home when Mauldin's contract expired.
Mauldin found short-lived support at the ill-fated New York
Star, in which he was published side-by-side with Walt Kelly.
In 1949, when that newspaper folded, Mauldin was left without a
forum for his cartoons.
"How's it feel to be a free man, Willie?", Aug.
8, 1945
Ink over pencil with paste-ons
Published Aug. 8, 1945 by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
LC-DIG-ppmsca-03241 (digital file from original)
CD 1 - Mauldin, no. 218 (A size)
Copyright 1945 by Bill Mauldin. Reproduced with Permission
of the Estate of William Mauldin.
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Mauldin reprinted this cartoon in his book,
Back Home, with the comment: "Most guys who had become
poppas during their absence were awed by their heirs when
they first saw them. Many soldiers, as well as girls, had
not fully realized what they were getting into when they had
married suddenly before leaving for overseas. A lot of young
guys whose immaturity had somehow survived their war experience
found themselves sobered when faced with proof that they were
the heads of families. Many veterans, who had looked forward
to resting and shooting pool for a year or so before facing
the hard facts of life, discovered that those tiny pink kissers
that smiled at them so winningly had to be kept stuffed with
food. A few perennial adolescents took to their heels and
deserted the penniless families they had started, but most
veterans shouldered the responsibility pretty well." |
Mauldin captured dislocation for thousands of soldiers
returning to the home front, but this cartoon also represents
his own dislocation as he adjusted to cartooning for the mainstream
press. |
"Stars and
Stripes? Never hoid of it!", Aug. 14, 1945
Ink over pencil with paste-ons
Published Aug. 14, 1945 by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
LC-DIG-ppmsca-03242 (digital file from original)
CD 1 - Mauldin, no. 220 (A size)
Copyright 1945 by Bill Mauldin. Reproduced with Permission
of the Estate of William Mauldin.
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"Don't bother Daddy. He's
writing a sequel to 'Grapes of Wrath'", Apr. 8, 1946
Ink and white out over pencil with scraping out
Published April 8, 1946
LC-DIG-ppmsca-03243 (digital file from original)
CD 1 - Mauldin, no. 1697 (C size)
Copyright 1946 by Bill Mauldin. Reproduced with Permission
of the Estate of William Mauldin.
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By 1946 Mauldin evidenced his anger at inequality. He republished
this cartoon in his book, Back Home, with a comment
on how the elimination of the OPA in 1946 led many landlords
to boost rents, at the expense of limited-income veterans
and their families. Mauldin revisited the theme of the lack
of suitable housing for low-income families frequently during
the late1940s. |
By 1948, Willie and Joe, and indeed veterans were a thing
of the past in Mauldin's cartoons. He attacked inequality
and injustice wherever he saw it. In a 1984 interview with
Target magazine, Mauldin told the interviewer, "I
made the fatal mistake of signing up with United Features
syndicate before the war was over so that I came out of the
army with a contract to do cartoons at $150 a week. To me
that seemed like a lot of money. The damn fools at the syndicate
thought that they were dealing with an entertainment feature
and they had sold it as such. I had a good big list of papers
and I was even being printed on the comic page but it was
not gag stuff. I came out of the army doing the same sort
of sardonic stuff I had done in the army. ...Then the syndicate
panicked and started editing my stuff, which the small print,
which I hadn't read, gave them the right to do. The result
was I quit when my contract ran out [in 1948]." |
"It's for
you", Oct. 1 1948
Ink over pencil
Published in the New York Star, October 1, 1948
LC-DIG-ppmsca-03215 (digital copy from original)
LC-USZ62-116329 (b&w film copy neg.)
CD 1 - Mauldin, no. 446 (A size)
Copyright 1948 by Bill Mauldin. Reproduced with Permission
of the Estate of William Mauldin.
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"Beat it. I'm busy stirrin'
up th' masses" Jan.
11, 1949
Ink over pencil with overlay
Published in the New York Star, January 11, 1949
LC-DIG-ppmsca-03245 (digital copy from original)
CD 1 - Mauldin, no. 482 (A size)
Copyright 1949 by Bill Mauldin. Reproduced with Permission
of the Estate of William Mauldin.
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Mauldin's New York Star cartoons focused on city-wise
children surviving in a rough environment, but he continued
to satirize the military, too. |
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