Willie & Joe: The WWII Years (2 Volume Set)
by: Bill Mauldin and Todd DePastino

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two hardcovers, 650 pages. The complete WWII cartoons of the greatest cartoonist of the Greatest Generation, in a beautiful, oversized, two-volume slipcased set. During WWII, the closest most Americans ever came to the war was through the cartoons of Bill Mauldin, the most beloved enlisted man in the U.S. Army. Fantagraphics Books brings together Mauldin's complete works from 1940 through the end of the war. This collection of over 600 cartoons, most never before reprinted, is more than the record of a great artist: it is an essential chronicle of America's citizen-soldiers from peace through war to victory. Bill Mauldin knew war because he was in it. He had created his characters, Willie and Joe, at age 18, before Pearl Harbor, while training with the 45th Infantry Division and cartooning part-time for the camp newspaper. His brilliant send-ups of officers were pure infantry, and the men loved it. With their heavy brush lines, detailed battlescapes, and pidgin of army slang and slum dialect, Mauldin's cartoons and captions recreated on paper the fully realized world of the American combat soldier. Their dark, often insubordinate humor sparked controversy among army brass and incensed General George S. Patton, Jr. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.