Cartoonist Wiley Miller hid a vulgar anatomical instruction to Donald Trump in this ‘Non Sequitur’ comic strip
- At least one US newspaper has decided to drop the strip over the hidden message
At first glance, Sunday’s Non Sequitur comic strip just showed bears dressed up like Leonardo da Vinci.
The syndicated strip opens with Bear-Vinci holding a picture of a Virtruvian Bear. It ends with the ursine artist painting a Mona Lisa, who is also, you guessed it, a bear. They’re all characters in the “Bearaissance”, and the format invites readers to colour in the drawings.
But much like da Vinci himself, Wiley Miller, whose work often tackles politics and has occasionally drawn controversy, could not resist inserting a secret message into his latest work. Hidden at the bottom right corner of the second panel, beneath a drawing of the Italian inventor’s flying machine, a semi-legible scribble appeared to read, “Go f*** yourself Trump.”
The Butler Eagle, a family-owned newspaper north of Pittsburgh that syndicated Non Sequitur, decided to pull the strip on Monday after an irate reader alerted the newspaper.
“One of our readers has a young daughter who reads the comics. This family sits down with this comic and they stumble across this hidden message,” Ron Vodenichar, the paper’s publisher and general manager, told The Washington Post.
He said the newspaper has been publishing the comic for a few years, and received Non Sequitur in a package with other syndicated comic strips that was already laid out. The decision to pull the comic, Vodenichar said, was about the profanity and “has nothing to do with who it was aimed at.”
