New Visual Books Reviewed - Review - NYTimes.com

Visuals - New Visual Books Reviewed - Review - NYTimes.com: "Bill Mauldin (1921-2003) was my first artist hero, and a new two-volume collection of his wartime cartoons, WILLIE & JOE: The WWII Years (Fantagraphics, $65), edited by Todd DePastino, reminds me why. In 1957, when I was 7, I found my father’s worn copy of “Up Front,” the best-selling collection of Mauldin’s regular Stars and Stripes comic panel of the same name, about the travails of two dogfaced G.I.’s, Willie and Joe. At the time, I wanted to be a cartoonist and spent many uninterrupted hours almost every day copying and recopying the details in each picture — they were my plaster casts. I learned drawing by faithfully replicating Mauldin’s comic brush-and-ink vignettes, and I learned a lot about the war, too, but not always what my history teacher wanted me to know."