Bill Mauldin:up front

I’m always amazed by all of the amazing cartoonists I’ve never heard of. Sometimes they come out of nowhere and blow you away. This week I had the pleasure of stumbling across Bill Mauldin, a cartoonist who’s probably most famous for his portrayal of infantrymen in World War 2 through his characters, Willie and Joe.

Bill Mauldin Apparently felt guilty that he was able to get out of combat by drawing cartoons so he drew these cartoons for the front line soldiers doing the actual fighting and dying and as a result some of them are inside jokes of the you had to be there nature. He wrote a book, Up Front, that explains what the average soldiers on the front line were like and what they were going through which really helps to inform the cartoons which are presented throughout the text.

Along with the humor he was able to capture the grim and cynical side of the everyday routine of a soldier. Some of the cartoons are even anti-war, anti authoritarian or pessimistic to a point of almost demeaning the soldiers he was portraying which is stunning since they were made for the army newspaper, Stars and Stripes. I think more than anything, these cartoons were honest, celebratory and sympathetic of the soldiers and that's why they're so powerful.

Oh yeah, and the drawings are beautiful.

These are really amazing cartoons. There's so much I haven't said that I should, regardless, Check em' out.

God is dead

I've made some pretty amazing finds in thrift stores (the most amazing being the huge Little Nemo in Slumberland book) so I'm always scouring their bookshelves. I saw this a couple days ago and it made me smile.

I'm pretty happy with this one, overall. I was trying out some new inking techniques which proved interesting. I definitely need to get more variation in my tones... but that will come with doing it more and getting comfortable.

i hope this one reads properly, i worry that it will be confusing. I was just trying to play with timing a bit, setting up a scene but I'm not entirely convinced pacing like this works for a one page comic. oh well, I'm learning a whole pile of stuff with every page i finish.

may all smokers burn in hell

Yeah, smoking disgusts me.

So here's a two page story. I think I'm starting to figure out the kind of cartooning I want to get into doing... definitely more exaggerated. I think comics are the perfect medium for exaggeration. I just read David B's Epileptic and it blew my mind into all sorts of different directions. I don't know though, I'm still trying to figure it out.

I'm getting sick of drawing so small. All of the pages i've been doing are drawn at 8.5 x 11 and i'm finding it hard to draw half decent panels... let alone ink them. for the actual mini they're going to be at half that size so it works well enough... but after this project I'm definitely going to move up.

This is a nice training ground for myself, but I know I can definitely draw much better comics than these.

work

I think about this stuff a lot, really. I hate the idea of getting a job or career. I want to work as little as I possibly can while doing things that I think are important. Unfortunately, none of these things will bring me money.

oh well.

I got a couple of real brushes before doing this one. Its amazing the difference it makes when you switch from a $2 brush to a $5 brush. I'm starting to figure out how some cartoonists make such awesome lines. I would love to get more into doing brushwork like that of Aaron Renier and Craig Thompson. Really loose and playful brushwork, i love the shit.

I have a lot of problems with this one, but hey, its a learning process.