Comic strips

Oregonian pulls Non Sequitur strips in wake of stand-off shooting

Skip to comments

Alan Gardner February 4, 2016 1 minute 2 comments

The Oregonian pulled three strips from a Non Sequitur week-long strip series that poked fun at the armed occupants of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. The series ran January 25-30, but after one of the militant leaders was shot on the 27th during an attempt to arrest him by authorities, the paper opted not to run the final three strips in the series.

From The Willamette Week:

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.”

Here’s the first of the five strips. The rest of the strips can be found on GoComics starting on January 27.

Normally, I don’t approve of editors censoring the comics. I’ve been following the Oregon stand off since they took over the wildlife refuge in early January. The state and the county in particular has been split apart over the issue. Given the sensitivities of the situation, the shooting, pulling the strip was a good decision.

UPDATED: The above story corrected spelling and clarified the story was a full-week story and not just the three strips that were pulled by The Oregonian.