Willie & Joe Back Home

In the summer of 1945, a great tide of battered soldiers began flowing back to the united States from around the globe. Though victorious, these exhausted men were nevertheless too grief-stricken over the loss of comrades, too guilt-ridden that they had survived, and too numbed by trauma to share in the country's euphoria. Most never saw a ticker-tape parade, or stole a Times Square kiss. All they wanted was to settle back into quiet workaday lives without fear. How tragic that the forces unleashed by World War II made this simple wish impossible.

Willie & Joe: Back Home brilliantly chronicles the struggles and disillusionments of these early postwar years and, in doing so, tells Bill Mauldin's own extraordinary story of his journey home to a wife he barely knew and a son he had only seen in pictures. The drawings capture the texture and feel, the warp and woof, of this confusing time: the ubiquitous hats and cigarettes, the domestic rubs, the rising fear of another war, and new conflicts over Civil Rights, civil liberties, and free speech. This second volume of Fantagraphics' series reprinting Mauldin's greatest work identifies and restores the dozens of cartoons censored by Mauldin's syndicate for their attacks on racial segregation and McCarthy-style "witch hunts." Mauldin pleaded with his syndicate to let him out of his contract so that he could return to the simple quiet life so desired by Willie & Joe. The syndicate refused, so Mauldin did battle, as always, through pen and ink.

"...Willie & Joe: Back Home... moved me... Mauldin is always funny, but those with a rosy image of WW II will be surprised by the complex world shown here... Fantagraphics has captured Mauldin's most enduring characters in two releases that do him justice." Michael Giltz

"Mauldin's postwar panels in which Willie and Joe tried to readjust to civilian life... were somewhat controversial, but their chronicle of the duo's struggles and disillusionment might be enjoyed by anyone who's ever left the service to return to a life that seems both familiar and foreign." The Huffington Post

In the summer of 1945, a great tide of battered soldiers began flowing back to the United States from around the globe. All they wanted was to settle back into quiet workaday lives without fear. How tragic that the forces unleashed by World War II made this simple wish impossible. The second volume of Fantagraphics' series reprinting Mauldin's greatest, Willie & Joe: Back Home brilliantly chronicles the struggles and disillusionments of these early postwar years and, in doing so, tells Bill Mauldin's own extraordinary story of his journey home to a wife he barely knew and a son he had only seen in pictures. The drawings capture the texture and feel, the warp and woof, of this confusing time: the ubiquitous hats and cigarettes, the domestic rubs, the rising fear of another war, and new conflicts over Civil Rights, civil liberties, and free speech.

This second volume of Fantagraphics' series reprinting Mauldin's greatest work identifies and restores the dozens of cartoons censored by Mauldin's syndicate for their attacks on racial segregation and McCarthy-style witch hunts.

WWII"s most famous soldiers return from the frontlines.

WWII's most famous soldiers, Willie and Joe, battle civilian life upon their return home in this sequel.

Born in 1921, Bill Mauldin squeezed several lifetimes into his eighty-one years. In addition to cartooning, he acted in Hollywood movies, ran for Congress, piloted airplanes, wrote several books and hundreds of articles, and won two Pulitzer Prizes, the first for his wartime cartoons. He died in 2003.Todd DePastino is the author of Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America and Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front, and the editor of the cartoon collections Willie & Joe: The WWII Years and Willie & Joe: Back Home. He teaches history and writes and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.