{"id":20532,"date":"2018-06-25T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T16:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=20532"},"modified":"2022-04-09T20:34:44","modified_gmt":"2022-04-10T00:34:44","slug":"8-things-you-might-not-know-about-the-wizard-of-id","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=20532","title":{"rendered":"8 Things You Might Not Know About The Wizard of Id"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/h5>\n

Jake Rossen and Mental Floss<\/a> present\u00a08 Things You Might Not Know About The Wizard of Id<\/a>.\u00a0 Here are three of my favorites…<\/p>\n

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1. THE IDEA FOR THE STRIP CAME FROM A DECK OF PLAYING CARDS.<\/h4>\n

Johnny Hart was already a successful syndicated cartoonist (the Stone Age comedy\u00a0B.C.<\/em>) before he and former Disney animator Brant Parker decided to\u00a0collaborate\u00a0on a different project. Hart was flipping through a deck of playing cards in 1964 when he came across a peculiar illustration used for the king. Drawing on it to create his own diminutive despot, Hart wrote most of the jokes for\u00a0Id<\/em>\u00a0while Parker illustrated it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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5. JIM HENSON WAS GOING TO PUT IT ON TELEVISION.<\/h4>\n

An avowed fan of comic strips and of\u00a0The Wizard of Id<\/em>\u00a0in particular, Muppets creator\u00a0Jim Henson<\/a>\u00a0met with Hart in 1968 to\u00a0discuss\u00a0a possible collaboration. Henson wanted to create an\u00a0Id<\/em>\u00a0television show that would use puppets against an animated backdrop. Hart agreed, and in 1969, Henson was able to shoot test footage featuring himself as the voice of the Wizard. But executives at Publishers-Hall, which had taken over syndication of the strip, were having trouble enticing networks into producing a series. By the time ABC showed interest, Henson had moved on to\u00a0Sesame Street<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and other projects.\u00a0Wizard of Id<\/em>\u00a0got translated into\u00a0animation<\/a>\u00a0in 1970 as part of a\u00a0Chuck Jones<\/a>\u00a0variety series titled\u00a0Curiosity Shop<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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8. BLONDIE AND BEETLE BAILEY CELEBRATED THE STRIP’S 50TH ANNIVERSARY.<\/h4>\n

When\u00a0The Wizard of Id<\/em>\u00a0passed the half-century milestone in 2014, the entire comics page\u00a0came out<\/a>\u00a0to celebrate.\u00a0Hi and Lois<\/em><\/a>\u00a0featured a portrait of the Wizard in a panel, while\u00a0Blondie<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Family Circus<\/em><\/a>\u00a0made subtle references to the anniversary. (As modern-day strips, it would be difficult to regard a medieval strip with more overt acknowledgment.) In\u00a0Beetle Bailey<\/em><\/a>, the perennial screw-up shared a cell with the eternally suffering Spookingdorf.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jake Rossen and Mental Floss present\u00a08 Things You Might Not Know About The Wizard of Id.\u00a0 Here are three of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,56,65,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-comics","category-trivia","category-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20532"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29396,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20532\/revisions\/29396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}