1921-
Cartoonist

Army Cartoonist.

Bill Mauldin became one of the best-known cartoonists of the 1940s on the strength of his World War II series Up Front. Syndicated in addition to their publication in his division newspaper and later the Stars and Stripes, his cartoons about army life were a favorite of enlisted men and civilians alike. In 1945 he received the Pulitzer Prize, at age twenty-four the youngest person to do so.

Civilian Life.

Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, New Mexico, and by the time he was a teenager he was drawing posters for local merchants. At his Phoenix high school he worked on the school newspaper. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts with money borrowed from his grandparents. He had no trouble securing work as a freelance cartoonist, but during the Depression he found it difficult to support himself, so in 1940 he...