Multiple newspapers are dropping the syndicated Non Sequitur comic strip following a hidden, profanity-laced insult directed at Donald Trump in Sunday’s strip.
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As reported by The Hill, at least a dozen newspapers have announced that they will no longer be running Non Sequitur, following the lead of Pennsylvania’s The Butler Eagle. That newspaper announced on Monday that they had discontinued the strip after a reader alerted them to the hidden message.
Sunday’s strip featured “Leonardo Bear Vinci” which is pretty much what it sounds like: a bear dressed as Leonardo da Vinci. The strip was presented as a coloring page with various images done in the vein of the famous Renaissance artist’s style. However, tucked at the bottom of one of the images was a scribbled message: “we fondly say go f— yourself to Trump.” You can see the strip in question here.
Following The Butler Eagle‘s decision to drop the comic strip, Andrews McMeel Syndication, the company that publishes Non Sequitur, confirmed to The Washington Post that more papers had followed suit and apologized for not catching the insult in the first place.
“We are sorry we missed the language in our editing process,” the company’s statement sad. “If we had discovered it, we would not have distributed the cartoon without it being removed. We apologize to ‘Non Sequitur’s’ clients and readers for our oversight.”
Non Sequitur was created by artist Wiley Miller in 1992 and, prior to the incident, was syndicated to over 700 newspapers as well as published on Go Comics and distributed via email. While the strip does have a history of politically leaning, but more recently it has been a much more traditional strip with recurring characters. According to Miller himself, Sunday’s Trump comment was an oversight, something he told the Post he had forgotten about and had intended to remove, though The Hill noted that he had teased the strip in a now-deleted tweet noting an “Easter egg” in the image.
“When I opened the paper Sunday morning and read my cartoon, I didn’t think anything of it, as I didn’t notice the scribbling that has now caught fire,” Miller said. “It was not intended for public consumption, and I meant to white it out before submitting it but forgot to. Had I intended to make a statement to be understood by the readers, I would have done so in a more subtle, sophisticated manner.”
What do you think about Non Sequitur being dropped by some publications as a result of the comment? Let us know in the comments below.
