Willie & Joe. The WWII Years.
This is a recent two volume compilation of Bill Mauldin's World War Two cartoons, going back to his very first cartoons with the 45th Infantry Division while in training in the US (about half the cartoons) and running through the end of the war.
The intent of the work, compiled after Mauldin's death, was to run every known Mauldin cartoon published during his military service. They actually missed at least two, however, as I can recall the ones I've seen that the author's missed. And one which is listed as having been published for the first time in a post war compilation was not, as it shows up in the original Up Front book published by Mauldin in 1945. I suspect that the method of the compilation by Todd DePastino may explain these minor errors as he relied upon the original 45th Division News and Stars & Stripes publications. Given this, he acknowledges a few may have been missed as a complete set of those newspapers from WWII does not exist. Still these errors are unfortunate, as the missed cartoons I am aware of are good ones, and it's a little difficult to understand why resort was not made to Up Front, being written, as it was, during World War Two by the cartoonist.
Having said that, this is still a valuable contribution to WWII literature and a must have for any Mauldin fan. DePastino included the original captions which are sometimes different even on familiar cartoons. And the extensive collection of pre North Africa cartoons will be almost certainly new to anyone reading the books. Original wartime drawings by Mauldin are also a surprise. Mauldin's cartoons came to increasingly be pen and ink drawings as the war went on, but it turns out that Mauldin already could act as a pen and ink artists if he chose to. A series of drawing from the Lousiana maneuvers are included in volume one, and are very artistic renditions of that event. A pen and ink drawing of a battle in Italy is as good as any WWII pen and ink work. To those of us here, some cartoons and drawing included in this set include equine topics beyond those of his Italian campaign cartoons, although Mauldin's main focus was always the infantry.
DePostino has also written a recent biography on Mauldin I intend to purchase, and he wrote a short biography for this compilation. His biography has dug up details of Mauldin's early life and background that Mauldin was quiet about, but which add to the story of this WWII soldier turned cartoonist, who in many ways portrayed as accurate of picture of men in combat as anyone ever has.
Well worth having.