By Stowell P. Watters

Staff Writer

With a perpetual deadline, Wiley Miller, said his work is never done; he must send bundles of his strips to a syndicate company as often as he can. In a room the size of a squash court with a fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows looking at a marsh, Miller creates “Non Sequitur” – a strip comic pairing talking animals with humans. When the 56-year-old Kennebunkport newcomer created the strip in 1991, Miller said he had set out to do something that had never been done before.

“I sat down going through all of the usual machinations – developing character, plot, setting blah, blah, blah,” he said.  “But then I asked myself, what was it about great comic strips of the past that gave them lasting power?”

Miller said he takes queue from strips such as “Doonesbury,” “Calvin and Hobbes,” “The Far Side” and “Peanuts” – strips that, in his mind, have withstood because of their ability to, “remain original.”

“So, with ‘Non Sequitur’ I came out with something completely different, something from the gut,” he said.

Miller said his first task was to develop a stage where he could showcase different characters, use varying cell structures and evoke responses from his audience that would span a variety of emotions – not just humor. In creating “Non Sequitur,” Miller said he was able to do just that – the strip allows him creative freedom to display anything from his political views to his wit.

Young cartoonists, when developing their first panel, usually will attempt to produce something original and place their characters in space or some far-off setting, Miller said. He called this a “mistake,” not because the ideas are not original, but because editors apparently struggle with these surreal concepts.

“The problem with trying to develop something new is then the fact that editors just won’t buy it,” Miller said. “I had to create something where I could go in any direction and not be locked in. I wanted to erase those boundaries.”

Originality seems to have paid off. Miller said, in the first six years of publication, “Non Sequitur” was honored with three Newspaper Panel Cartoon Awards and, in 1992, won the Newspaper Comic Strip Award. “Non Sequitur” is the only strip in history to have won awards in both the Newspaper Panel Cartoon and Comic Strip divisions, he said.

Although success came rather rapidly for “Non Sequitur,” he said it was not an overnight sensation.

Originally from southern California, Miller went to high school in Washington, D.C. and then graduated from the Virginia Commonwealth University with majors in painting and printing. Growing up, Miller said he was always a fan of comic strips like Walt Kelly’s “Pogo,” Al Capp’s “Li’l Abner” and “Mad Magazine.” Aside from “Mad Magazine,” Miller said he would read the comics just as any other kid – because they were attached to the newspaper.

“Your parents bought the paper and you read the comics, that is how it was for me,” he said.

In 1976 Miller moved to North Carolina and was hired by the Greensboro News and the Greensboro Record, as a staff artist. Miller said his responsibilities at that job were “a little harrowing.”

“I was responsible for any sort of art that got put in the paper; charts, article illustration, graphs, columns – I had none of my own time,” Miller said.

In 1978 Miller returned to California and was hired by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat to create a daily editorial cartoon but was laid off in the recession of the early 1980s.

“Basically, they needed to cut back the art department – and I was the art department,” Miller said.

Around the same time Miller was creating his first syndicated strip – “Fenton” – about an older gentleman who lived through the depression and, as Miller put it, “looked at stuff from a more historical point of view.” In a time when the economy was failing, Miller said people seemed to enjoy “Fenton” because the main character could relate to economic hardship.

Fenton appeared in 125 papers, but more importantly for the progression of Miller’s career, was picked up by the San Francisco Examiner. He said the editors loved his work and hired him as an editorial cartoonist. For seven years Miller worked the daily paper circuit, providing cartoons to illustrate the political scene of the late 1970s. But again, recession loomed.

“In 1992 I did something our current White House did not do – I developed an exit strategy,” he said.

Miller saw the beginning of cut-backs and said he decided it was time to jump ship.

“When my friends and I would hang out I would just do little doodles on napkins. They really liked them so I started bringing paper and saving them, they were my  ‘bartoons,’” he said.

While he was employed at the San Francisco Examiner, Miller attended a party at a friend’s home. He had brought the ‘bartoons,’ and ended up showing them to Victoria Coviello – whom he later married. Miller said it was her prodding him to sell his ‘bartoons’ to Playboy magazine that “got the ball rolling.”

“I took it on as a design project and started to fill things out, started to mix up all of these skills I had learned – editorial stuff, gags, good dialog, color,” he said.

When Miller quit the job in San Francisco, Coviello was simultaneously accepted as one of 10 students selected into the University of Iowa’s nonfiction Writer’s Workshop.

“We had to take the opportunity,” he said. “And because of bad economic times I knew I had to do something big.”

In 1992 Miller released “Non Sequitur” and “never looked back,” and with its original success he said he was finally able to fulfill his dream – to sustain himself using his ideas instead of doing the work for others.

“With the format I have created for myself I am able to extend the typical creative lifespan of the comic strip. I do continued stories and characters or one shot gags – it is a new thing,” he said.

In 2005, Miller introduced Basil Pepperell – a 12-year-old boy who lived in a lighthouse off the coast of Maine – into the Sunday editions of his strip. Miller said the setting came from he and his wife’s trips to Maine.

“Maine was always a place I had visited, and we just decided it was time to get out here and relax, live the good life,” Miller said.

The “Basil Pepperell” strips portray Basil as an ordinary boy who thinks everyone else’s life was much more exciting than his. In 2005 Miller began receiving more and more fan mail about the strip, mostly from parents who said they enjoyed reading it to their children. So much support arrived by mail that Miller decided to try his hand at publishing a book about the boy.

“We used to rent in Kittery and so much of what you see in the book comes from the history and the scenery of Maine,” Miller said.

In 2006, Miller published “TheExtraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Basil” through Blue Sky Press (a division of Scholastic), and said he received nothing but positive feedback. Also in this book deal was a planned sequel – “Ordinary Basil: Attack of the Volcano Monkeys” – which, with the writing help of his wife, Miller saw published last month. Miller said he would like to someday look into animation. 

“Innovation is a priority, the best writers I know unlock image in your head, but it cannot be all text all the time. There will always be the need for the visual.” 

In a town with a thriving arts community, Miller said he has some words of advice for any fledgling artist.

“Before you approach an abstract art you need that formal training. You need to know all the rules of line and composition, because at the end of the day art is a skill that must be learned,” Miller said. “And the world always needs more art.”