This collection of cartoons will immensely enhance enjoyment of Todd DePastino's biography of Bill Mauldin.

It is a collection of Mauldin's cartoons and sketches from 1940-45, as complete as the publishers could make it by culling from widely scattered newspapers, magazines and books.

		"WILLIE & JOE: THE WW II YEARS" Edited by Todd DePastino Fantagraphics ($65)

Strictly speaking, the title could be considered slightly inaccurate because Mauldin's famous "dogface" soldiers scarcely existed outside the World War II years. They first appeared in March 1944 in Stars and Stripes. After the war they made only brief appearances as veterans.

But no more nitpicking. Much of the work here was done for Mauldin's own division newspaper, the 45th Division News. These hundreds of cartoons show his talent maturing from simple outline figures and objects (accompanied by lame captions), into the bold, black use of brush and pen that we associate with Willie and Joe.

For the most part, these GIs, like Mauldin, had grown up poor and hard; the Army was not the toughest life they had known, and the low pay was better than they had ever earned. Infantrymen understood that the cartoonist's soldiers were just like them.

-- Roger K. Miller