Papers pull ‘Non Sequitur’ comic
Profane Trump insult was hidden
Butler Eagle publisher and general manager Ron Vodenichar isn’t laughing at what happened in the funny papers Sunday.
Cartoonist Wiley Miller hid an “Easter egg” sentiment in the middle panel of his “Non Sequitur” strip. Anyone reading the “Leonardo BearVinci” coloring page might well have missed the tiny, scribbled sentiment aimed at Donald Trump.
“We fondly say … go [expletive] yourself.”
The Eagle has dropped “Non Sequitur,” which runs in more than 700 newspapers, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. At least one other paper, the Columbus Dispatch, also has bailed. The story of the Eagle dropping the strip was picked up by national news outlets.
“It’s nothing we would have sanctioned, had we seen it,” said Sally Stapleton, Post-Gazette managing editor. “I can assure you, had we spotted it, we would have pulled it out.”
The Sunday comics are sent directly from Andrews McMeel Syndication to the Post-Gazette’s production facility in Clinton, where they are printed two weeks before they are distributed to customers. The Eagle has a similar process.
The Post-Gazette is considering its options to replace “Non Sequitur.”
An Eagle reader who said he sat down with his daughter to color the page called the paper to complain. He was the first of at least 50. “What’s really amazed me is how many people have bothered to pick up a phone and call, from across the country,” said Mr. Vodenichar, who noted the callers were in support of dropping the strip but online comments had gone the other way.
“The local people have been very supportive, the Western Pennsylvania people, but I’m getting a lot of calls from people who [also] are seeing this [on national news sites] … and they have been extremely negative.”
Mr. Miller won the 2013 Reuben Award for cartoonist of the year from the National Cartoonists Society. The honor has gone to artists since 1946, and winners include Will Eisner, Matt Groening, Charles M. Schulz and Cathy Guisewite.
On Sunday, he tweeted, “Some of my sharp-eyed readers have spotted a little Easter egg from Leonardo Bear-Vinci. Can you find it?”
Subversion in the funny papers isn’t new. In the 1960s and
1970s, Walt Kelly’s “Pogo” depicted political figures as animals in the Okefenokee Swamp. One named Simple J. Malarkey was a stand-in for Sen. Joseph P. McCarthy, R-Wisconsin. A newspaper in New England threatened to drop the strip if that character appeared again; Mr. Kelly simply drew a paper sack over his head the next time.
Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” received a great public outpouring of both support and derision in 1986, when it featured a “sleaze” report on former officials of the Ronald Reagan administration. Currently on Facebook, Berkeley Breathed’s “Bloom County” is running a parody about the National Enquirer’s alleged extortion of Jeff Bezos.
The Columbus Dispatch stated it would drop “Non Sequitur” Monday: “We must be able to trust that the people who provide content to us will uphold the high standards we have set for The Dispatch,” said a story posted on the Ohio newspaper’s website. “That includes those who draw the comics. Wiley Miller has lost our trust. Therefore, we cannot and will not publish his work going forward.
Andrews McMeel Syndication did not return requests for comment about “Non Sequitur.”
As of Monday, GoComics.com — an online curator of comics that carries the strip — and the syndicate’s site featured Sunday’s “Non Sequitur” with a blank space where the original text was written.
On Sunday, a reader going by the name of Carole Athena Costa posted beneath it: “On the second frame, with all the inventions, did anybody else see what I saw … I couldn’t make out the first line but the second and third lines, if I read them correctly, made me laugh so loud, I hope I didn’t wake the neighbors!”
Of the 90-plus replies that followed, most seemed pleased by Mr. Miller’s subversion: “I think I read the same thing but don’t tell anybody” wrote mr_sherman.
Mr. Vodenichar disagrees: “This person intentionally deceived the people who are paying him. This isn’t an issue of free speech or freedom of the press. This guy had one particular job to do and that was to write an entertainment comic for a family-oriented section.
“If that’s what he is assigned to do, nowhere does that give him the right to go off on his own political tangent. And I can tell you I would not have handled this differently if … it’s Republican or Democrat.
“You invite kids to color this page and then you do that? That’s dead wrong.”