Bill Mauldin made pictures that had to work on cheap newsprint, at small sizes, for readers who were tired, cold and in no mood for decoration. The result is a lesson in economy. A Bill Mauldin panel usually has two or three figures, a few marks for ground and weather, and a single line of type-like hand lettering underneath. Everything else is left out.
His work is protected by copyright, and none of the objects connected to him in the collections of the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago or the Cleveland Museum of Art is flagged public domain or CC0. This guide therefore describes his cartoons in text only, and none of them is free to use. For historic images that are cleared for reuse, browse the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Bill Mauldin?
Britannica gives his birth as 29 October 1921 in Mountain Park, New Mexico, and his death as 22 January 2003 in Newport Beach, California; the Art Institute of Chicago’s records give the same years. The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture records that he studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts before joining the army.
He enlisted in 1940 and served with the 45th Infantry Division, drawing for the division’s own paper, the 45th Division News, according to the Oklahoma encyclopedia and the division’s veterans’ history site. During the war his cartoons moved to Stars and Stripes, the newspaper read by American troops, where Willie and Joe became familiar figures. The Pritzker Military Museum & Library, which holds a large collection of his original artwork, describes the pair as perhaps the most well-known American GIs.
After the war he became a newspaper editorial cartoonist. He joined the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1958 and moved to the Chicago Sun-Times in 1962, where he spent the rest of his career. His memoir, The Brass Ring (1971), covers his life up to 1945.
A dated outline of key works
- 1940s: 45th Division News. Early cartoons for his own division’s paper, drawn by a soldier for soldiers.
- Wartime: Willie and Joe in Stars and Stripes. Two unshaven infantrymen, drawn in heavy ink, comment on rain, mud, rations and officers.
- 1945: Up Front and the first Pulitzer. The Pulitzer Prize board cited him “for distinguished service as a cartoonist, as exemplified by the series entitled Up Front With Mauldin.” The book Up Front, collecting the cartoons with his own text, was published the same year.
- 30 October 1958: the Pasternak cartoon. Published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and captioned “I won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What was your crime?”, it shows the Soviet writer Boris Pasternak as a prisoner speaking to another inmate. The Pulitzer board lists it as the work behind his 1959 prize for editorial cartooning.
- 1963: civil-rights cartoons. The Library of Congress holds Chicago Sun-Times cartoons from that year and showed them in its 2013–2014 exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.
- 23 November 1963: the weeping Lincoln. The day after President Kennedy was shot, the Sun-Times ran his drawing of the seated Lincoln Memorial statue with its head bowed in its hands. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library holds the original, and the Art Institute of Chicago holds a 2007 letterpress printing titled Weeping Lincoln.
What to look at in a Bill Mauldin panel
Composition. Most panels are built around one moment and one gag. The figures are large in the frame and the setting is reduced to a few marks for ground, rain or rubble. There is no establishing shot: the joke assumes you know where you are.
Line. His wartime figures are drawn with a heavy, varied brush line. Stubble and worn uniforms come from short strokes rather than careful hatching, and Willie and Joe are recognisable from their slouch and silhouette as much as their faces.
Tone. The Art Institute of Chicago catalogues two of his drawings, Flower with Spiked Club (dated 1945/75) and Anybody with an appetite like that is bound to spill some (1989), as pen and brush and black ink with black crayon on white or ivory card; the later sheet also shows traces of white correction fluid. Library of Congress records for his 1963 Sun-Times cartoons list crayon and ink, blue pencil and white-out. The crayon gives a soft, grainy grey that newspaper printing could reproduce, sitting between the solid black of the brush and the paper white.
Lettering. The caption is hand lettered beneath the panel, usually in capitals, and it often carries the whole joke. Speech is reported rather than ballooned, which keeps the drawing clear. A Time magazine profile from his wartime years reported that he was left-handed and that he lettered from right to left so that he would not smear the wet ink.
Signature. His name sits small in a lower corner, written in the same brush as the drawing. It identifies the panel without competing with it.
Technique: speed, pressure and reproduction
Bill Mauldin drew for print, and every technical choice follows from that. Brush and ink produce lines with enough weight to survive coarse halftone screens and absorbent newsprint. Crayon on a textured board breaks into tiny dots of black on its own, so grey areas could be shot as line art rather than needing a separate tone screen. White correction paint lets the cartoonist cut back into blacks and repair a drawing on deadline.
The wartime work also shows the virtue of limited materials: a pen or brush, a stick of crayon, a sheet of card. That constraint gives the series its unity. Every panel shares the same weight of line and the same narrow tonal range, so the whole run reads as one visual voice.
The later editorial cartoons keep the same habits with more air. In the Lincoln drawing the stone figure is left largely as paper, and the effect is quieter and more monumental, because the subject called for it.
Where to see the work
The Art Institute of Chicago holds the three works mentioned above in its Prints and Drawings department. The Library of Congress, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and the Newberry Library in Chicago also hold Mauldin material. The touring exhibition Drawn to Combat: Bill Mauldin and the Art of War, organised by the Pritzker Military Museum & Library, is on view at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans from 16 July 2026 to 18 April 2027, according to the museum.
If his panels interest you, compare them with the world-building of his fellow newspaper cartoonist Al Capp, and with the earlier political drawings of Thomas Nast, whose engraved cartoons for Harper’s Weekly show the editorial cartoon at nineteenth-century density.
How designers can borrow from Bill Mauldin
Edit to one idea. A Mauldin panel says one thing. Before adding a second message to a poster, a social graphic or a slide, ask whether the first one would be stronger alone.
Let the caption do the work. Put the punchline in the words and keep the picture as the setup. In infographics and editorial illustration this means a short headline under a plain image, rather than labels scattered across a busy one.
Design for the worst reproduction. His drawings were made to survive bad paper. Test your marks at thumbnail size, in one colour and on a low-quality screen. If the silhouette still reads, the design is robust.
Use texture as tone. A grainy crayon grey can replace flat fills and gradients in spot illustrations and packaging. Keep to one texture so the system stays coherent.
Draw your own letters. Hand lettering in capitals, drawn with the same tool as the illustration, ties the words to the picture. For more on drawn letterforms, explore the lettering theme in the museum collection.
One caution: Willie and Joe, the Pasternak cartoon and the Lincoln drawing are protected works. Study the approach, then make your own marks; do not trace or reproduce his drawings without permission from the rights holders.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Bill Mauldin?
Bill Mauldin (1921–2003) was an American cartoonist, born in Mountain Park, New Mexico. He drew Willie and Joe for soldiers’ newspapers during the Second World War, then worked as an editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Chicago Sun-Times.
What did Bill Mauldin win the Pulitzer Prize for?
He won two. The 1945 prize cited his series Up Front With Mauldin. The 1959 prize was for a Post-Dispatch cartoon of 30 October 1958 showing Boris Pasternak as a prisoner, captioned “I won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What was your crime?”
What materials did Bill Mauldin use?
Museum and library catalogues describe pen and brush with black ink, black crayon on card, blue pencil and white correction fluid. The combination gave strong blacks and grainy greys that printed well on newsprint.
Are Bill Mauldin’s cartoons public domain?
No. None of the objects connected to him at the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago or the Cleveland Museum of Art is flagged public domain or CC0, and the Lincoln cartoon is credited to his estate. Treat his drawings as protected and license any use.
