Fans turn out to support Wiley Miller

On Monday, Aug. 5, over 400 people attended “Northwest Passages,” a speaker series presented by The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington), to hear Wiley Miller discuss his return to the comic pages.

From left: Rob Curley, Editor, The Spokesman-Review; Dave Mace, AVP Sales, AMU Syndication; Wiley Miller, creator of Non Sequitur.

Months after an anti-Trump message appeared in one of Miller’s Non Sequitur comic strips, causing hundreds of newspapers to drop his strip, the editor at The Spokesman-Review learned that some papers were reinstating the comic and reached out to Dave Mace, Andrews McMeel Syndication’s National AVP of Sales, to learn why. The paper then ran a poll asking readers if they missed the comic, and approximately 1,440 readers responded with a resounding “yes.”

Miller created a custom comic featuring a famous Spokane bridge to celebrate the return of the strip to The Spokesman-Review.

The masthead of the newspaper announcing the return of Non Sequitur to The Spokesman-Review.

But The Spokesman-Review did much more than restart the comic. It published a series of feature articles on Miller in the days leading up to the event, as well as this post-event recap, and the “Spokane-only” comic Miller created was made into a poster and appeared in the paper.

A local TV outlet in Spokane also ran a feature about Miller, along with a podcast. Readers attended a “Meet and Greet” before the event where Miller signed posters, custom T-shirts and copies of the newspaper, and he personally thanked readers for their support.