Oregonian Yanks Comic Strips Mocking Militants

Oregonian editor Mark Katches says the paper pulled the Non Sequitur strips after the killing of LaVoy Finicum.

Don't look for any #YallQaeda jokes in the funny pages in the wake of Ammon Bundy's arrest.

For three days last week, The Oregonian pulled installments of the syndicated comic strip Non Sequitur that mocked the militants who occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon.

In the print editions Jan. 28-30, Non Sequitur strips were replaced with older, previously run ones.

The censored cartoons depict a band of gun-toting snowmen occupying a wildlife preserve outhouse. In the Jan. 29 strip, the group's leader objects to being labeled a terrorist, saying, "Terrorists wear a turban, not a cowboy hat."

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Wiley Miller, the Maine cartoonist who draws Non Sequitur, was surprised to learn of the paper's decision.

"This is the first I've heard about it," Miller tells WW. "Not controversial to my knowledge."

Oregonian editor Mark Katches says the paper pulled the strips after the killing of LaVoy Finicum.

"The strip, which had been making fun of such groups, seemed jarring and in poor taste given that someone now was dead," Katches says. "That decision has yielded a grand total of two reader complaints."

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