Word: mauldin
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Kudos for the story on the Post-Dispatch's Bill Mauldin [July 21]. Although never known for its adaptability to new ideas, the Midwest can be proud of Dan Fitzpatrick's equally corrosive successor. Mauldin gives fair promise of adhering to Joseph Pulitzer's platform: "Always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties...
...Mauldin's originality hatches only after the most stringent of professional routines, of which the morning parboil is but a part. Four hours of preparation, four hours of execution go into each cartoon. Arriving at his cluttered Post-Dispatch office about 10 in the morning, Mauldin reads the freshly printed city edition for the current news. Within the hour, he has submitted, half anxiously, half belligerently, a rough pencil sketch of his idea to Editorial Page Editor Robert Lasch. The two have a smooth working relation. "Bob," says Mauldin, "is like a good cop, there to protect...
Once Lasch approves, Mauldin works up half a dozen crude, matchbook-sized "spots"-samples that vary widely in composition and approach. These spots play an important role in giving his idea different settings: "You've got to be suspicious if anything satisfies you right off." After a quick lunch, Mauldin grids his drawingboard work area into nine squares and begins drafting the cartoon, first in pencil and then in ink. A stickler for just the right detail, he frequently consults his favorite reference, the Sears, Roebuck catalogue, or poses before a Polaroid Land camera (with a self-tripping shutter...
...left-hander who works carefully up from the lower right-hand corner so as not to smear his work, Mauldin generally has finished next day's cartoon by 6, personally escorts it to the engraving department ("I would never trust a copy boy with it") before "heading out for the Bismarck, a Post-Dispatch hangout, for a relaxing martini or two with friends. But his thoughts are never far from the job. His second wife Natalie, a Sarah Lawrence graduate whom Mauldin met at a Manhattan party after the war, has learned not to talk to Bill at bedtime...
Outdistancing the Field. In a profession by no means overcrowded with talent, Editorial Cartoonist Bill Mauldin has outdistanced the field. There are a few strong pens still around, but not many...