Wiley Miller, Creator of Non Sequitur
Wiley Miller always wanted to be a cartoonist. He has transformed that yearning into a career that has filled his life with work he loves, including the development of innovative techniques in the process of colour cartooning and in the customized sizing of comics.
From the time he was a child, Wiley Miller adored comics and was "always reading, tracing, and copying the work of my favourites."*(1) Born in Burbank, California on April 15, 1951, Miller spent his early years in Hollywood then moved, attending high school in McLean, Virginia. Opportunity knocked on Miller's door while in high school with the chance to meet Brant Parker, co-creator of "The Wizard of Id." After conversing with the famed cartoonist, Miller realized he could make cartooning his profession. The seed was planted.
Miller studied art at Virginia Commonwealth University. Upon graduation, he found work in Los Angeles film studio drawing educational material. In 1976, he took a position as staff artist/editorial cartoonist at the News & Record in Greensboro, North Carolina. Crossing the country once more, he moved two years later to the Press Democrat, the newspaper of Santa Rosa, California. His editorial cartoons began syndication under the Copley News Service syndicate in 1980. The recession of 1981 hit the newspapers hard and Miller lost his editorial cartoonist job with the Press Democrat.
In 1982, while waiting for the economy to improve, Fenton sprouted from the pen of Wiley Miller. The strip was circulated under the North America Syndicate and ran in newspapers for three years. By 1986, Miller was back drawing editorial cartoons, this round for the San Francisco Examiner. The California Newspaper Publishers Association honoured Miller with their "Best Editorial Cartoonist" award in 1988. Also for editorial cartooning, he received the "Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award" in 1991.
In a moment of genius in 1991, (and that moment has continued for more than two decades) Miller created Non Sequitur, his hugely popular comic strip with a theme of, um, well, no theme. The title gives away the secret of the strip - according to the Gage Dictionary the definition of non sequitur is "a statement or reply that has no direct relationship with what has just been said."
Miller noted, "That's the whole point of Non Sequitur ... Today's cartoon has nothing to do with tomorrow's." *(3) Non Sequitur met with immediate success, and now has grown to an audience of almost 500 newspapers worldwide through Universal Syndicate.
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