Cartoonist

Bill Mauldin, the Army sergeant who created Willie and Joe, the cartoon characters that became enduring symbols of the grimy, irrepressible American infantrymen who triumphed over the German army and prevailed over their own rear-echelon officers in World War II, died yesterday in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 81 years old. After Willie and Joe won the war, Mr. Mauldin became a syndicated newspaper cartoonist and went on for more than 50 years to caricature bigots, super-patriots, doctrinaire liberals and conservatives, and pompous souls in whatever form they appeared.

A nationally known cartoonist and an expert in bilingual education will be the featured speakers during Hispanic Heritage Month at McDaniel College in Westminster. Co-sponsored by the McDaniel College Hispanic/Latino Alliance and the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the campus celebration that started Sunday and runs through Oct. 15 also features exhibits in Decker College Center. Hector Cantu, co-creator and writer of the newspaper comic strip "Baldo," takes the podium at 7 o'clock tonight in Baker Memorial Chapel.

The Wilde Lake Community Association will sponsor belly-dance lessons next month with Mia Naja al Sephira at Slayton House in Wilde Lake Village. The beginner class for ages 16 and older will be held from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.; the intermediate class will be held from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Session I will run Tuesdays, from Sept. 3 to Oct. 22. Session II will run Sundays, from Sept. 29 through Dec. 17. The cost is $58 for eight weeks. Advance, paid registration is required. Information: 410-730-3987.

WASHINGTON - Herbert Block may have been a legend, a political cartoonist at The Washington Post for the better part of the 20th century. But to his friends, he looked and lived the role of the typical ink-stained wretch - a slightly rumpled, wryly funny character far more interested in the latest news than in how much money was in his pocket. Then the cartoonist known as Herblock died, and his friends learned something they never suspected: Block, the most modest of men, was filthy rich.

Columbia cartoonist Frank Cho is best known for his comic, Liberty Meadows, a kooky animal sanctuary starring a hapless veterinarian named Frank, his lushly built, brainy colleague Brandy, and a flock of ornery critters. But within hours of September's terrorist attacks, Cho was hard at work on a cover for 9-11: Emergency Relief (Alternative Comics, $14.95), a collection of personal accounts of that day, written and drawn by comic artists from across the country. Cho's powerful portrait of a steel-jawed firefighter and other rescue workers toiling amid the World Trade Center ruins has super-hero heft.

WHEN I was a young boy in the Bethesda area, I delivered the Washington Post with Herblock's cartoons tucked inside to about 50 homes on my route. But before I started my route each morning, I'd yank out a paper from the banded bundle and look at his cartoon. The first time I found his cartoon was by accident because I didn't know what an editorial cartoon was. There before me was a wiseacre drawing in a sea of gray type, and it was of an authority figure -- no less a personage than a president.

The Washington Post's late publisher Katharine Graham once said that her "glorious life and times" with the great political cartoonist Herblock made her think of one of her mother's sayings: "Any man worth marrying is impossible to live with." Graham said that beneath Herblock's genius for cartooning and writing lay a "modest, sweet, aw-shucks personality. ... Underneath that," she added, "lies a layer of iron and steel." For his publishers and editors, it was "like having a tiger by the tail," she said.

Jim Sizemore, a local cartoonist, will hold an hour-long cartooning workshop for kids 6 to 12 at the Hereford Branch Library on Saturday. Participants will learn some of the tricks of the comic's trade, including how to draw people and animals and how to write a punchline. Using a flip-book, Sizemore shows how simple shapes can be expanded upon to become just about anything - kids, dogs, furniture - and then takes his students through the process step by step as they create cartoons of their own. Sizemore's single-panel cartoons have appeared in newspapers and magazines (including the Wall Street Journal and the Saturday Evening Post)

Everybody is a bit off in James Proimos' world. Take Molly O!, the eight-year-old pop singing sensation in the new animated children's series created by the Baltimore resident that starts today on the WB network. The star of "Generation O!" has a big pink limousine and millions of fans - but an unyielding 7:30 p.m. bedtime. In the episode set to air today, Molly is blackmailed by a politician who discovers that she once wet her bed after drinking too much punch. In another episode, Molly O!

Eliot A. Caplin, 86, a writer who devised the plots for a number of well-known comic strips, died Feb. 20 in Stockbridge, Mass. He cooperated with artists who produced strips such as "Heart of Juliet Jones," "Big Ben Bolt" and "Dr. Bobbs." He was the brother of "L'il Abner" cartoonist Al Capp. Although the brothers never collaborated on a strip, Mr. Capp conceived two strips that he passed along to Mr. Caplin. One, "Abbie an' Slats," drawn by Raeburn van Buren, lasted 23 years. The other was "Long Sam," drawn by Bob Lubbers.