There's no explaining this 'Non Sequitur'

You may have a hard time figuring out what Wiley Miller's comic strip is about. So does Wiley Miller.

"That's the whole point of Non Sequitur," says Miller, a bearded, 52-year-old former editorial cartoonist who lives in Santa Barbara, Calif. "Today's cartoon has nothing to do with tomorrow's."

Folks even have trouble with the title.

"It's the most common question I get: 'What's it mean?' My answer is: 'Go look it up.' "

Miller is a guy who seems to have spent his life avoiding predictability.

At heart, he is a cocktail napkin doodler who began as an editorial cartoonist for California's Santa Rosa Press Democrat in 1978, then joined the San Francisco Examiner a few years later.

But in the early '90s, he followed his wife, Victoria Coviello, to the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop in Iowa City, where he turned from editorial cartooning to the funny pages, full time.

"It was a logical transition," Miller says. "Editorial cartooning at the time was a rapidly dying art. Now it's a completely dead art. Editors don't want cartoonists actually editorializing; they want a gag cartoon. Cartoons are being dumbed down. So I thought the comic page is where topical humor now belongs. I'm now doing more editorializing on comic pages than 90 percent of cartoonists are doing on editorial pages."

Whatever he's doing, it works. Non Sequitur has been named the National Cartoonists Society's "Best Comic Panel" three times, in 1995, 1996 and 1998. It runs in about 500 newspapers.

Miller's favorite targets are generally institutions, not individuals, such as the medical system, the legal system, Wall Street, and, of course, marriage.

"Non Sequitur is a hybrid, a blend of the different venues I've worked in, from editorial cartoons to magazine cartoons," Miller says. "It has more subtext to it than the standard comic strip. Standard comic strips are meant to be light fare, to not offend. That's the society we live in: It's pathetic everybody is so wary of making an honest observation. Last year, there was one the Boston Globe wouldn't run because it had something to do with the bishops scandal. So I was banned in Boston."

He just likes to make every day a surprise.

"One day, it's a single-panel punch in the face, the next it's a multipanel, character-driven cartoon," Miller says (though a recurring character is a wry little girl named after his daughter, Danae). "It's like several comic strips in one spot. When I sat down to create a strip, I had in mind as broad a base as possible to go in any direction that creativity took me.

"The danger for any satirist is predictability. That's what happens with the traditional comic strip: There are no surprises left. You can be mildly amused but not surprised. I just like to keep the readers guessing."

GUEST COMIC: NON SEQUITUR

By Wiley Miller

So far, our audition of new comic strips has brought you teen angst, house cat high jinks and a single mom. This week, we bring you . . . we're not sure what. Non Sequitur is deliberately indescribable, says its creator, Wiley Miller. Each contender for a spot on our funny pages is being introduced on a Sunday and running for a week in Floridian. After we've run all the contenders, we'll decide, with your help, which ones we want to keep. You can let us know your thoughts by writing to us: "Comics," St. Petersburg Times, c/o John Barry, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731. Or e-mail: floridian@sptimes.com with "Comics" in the subject line.

-- JOHN BARRY, deputy Floridian editor

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