The ToonSeum January Lecture Series III: Author Todd Depastino: A Life Up Front January 30, 2010

The program will be an illustrated talk on the great World War II cartoonist Bill Mauldin, an army infantry sergeant who rocketed to fame at age twenty-two with his wildly popular feature "Up Front." Week after week, Mauldin defied army censors, German artillery, and General George Patton's pledge to throw him in jail for insubordination to deliver his grim depictions of war to "Stars and Stripes" and hundreds of homefront newspapers.

There, readers followed the stories of Willie and Joe, two wise-cracking 'dogfaces' whose mud-caked uniforms and pidgin of army slang and slum dialect bore eloquent witness to the world of combat and the men who lived- and died - in it. We have never viewed war in the same way since.

The talk is based on Todd's book, BILL MAULDIN: A LIFE UP FRONT (W.W. Norton, 2008), a winner of the 2009 Anne M. Sperber Prize for biography. Todd is also editor of acclaimed WILLIE & JOE: THE WWII YEARS (Fantagraphics Books, 2008), the first complete collection of Mauldin's World War II.

His previous books include CITIZEN HOBO: HOW A CENTURY OF HOMELESSNESS SHAPED AMERICA (University of Chicago Press, 2003) which won a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. He has a Ph.D. in American History from Yale University and teaches at Waynesburg University. Currently, he lives in Mt. Lebanon with his wife and two daughters.

Official Website: http://www.toonseum.org