Willie and Joe. The WWII Years. Bill Mauldin. Fantagraphic Books. (2008)

A very handsome, two volume set of the wartime cartoons by Bill Mauldin that enraged General Patton, who wanted to throw Bill Mauldin in jail for "spreading dissent" and were loved by the millions of infantry soldiers who lives he illustrated. What makes this much more than an interesting historical document is that the jokes are still funny long after the context for them has receded far from the public memory. These were intended for a very specific audience who would read them in a very specific context. The were being read by soldiers and civilians who were in a war and would read the public context for the cartons as much as the actual content. It was this that caused General Patton such rage, the context gave the content a dangerous edge. Today, when they context of WWII is as far away as the Jurassic Age all we have is the content and that makes reading them a completely different experience.

Bill Mauldin realised that being a soldier, war time or peacetime, is primarily a job, much like any other job that functions within a large bureaucracy and management structure. The cartoons are about people at work, the absurd constrictions and the petty rules that define work, the comradeship that exists between people thrown into work together and the uneasy relationships between those who give orders and those who obey them. That the context is military at peace or war is far less importance that the shared experience of anyone who has had a job and the frustrations and oddities that come with working. In particular reading the cartoons of his unshaven GIs at war in Europe, the struggle in not with the enemy it is with the Army and sometimes with your fellows. It rings as true now as it did for the audience in the trenched and tents who saw that someone actually understood what it was like to do what they did.

In the last months of his life Bill Mauldin received thousands of letters and cards from old veterans and their relatives, they knew that he was on their side and in a war that is deeply precious knowledge. This box set is worth getting because a talented artist still shines as brightly today as he did over sixty years ago.