The Wizard of Id

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
This page needs visual enhancement.
You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page.


The Wizard of Id is a daily newspaper comic strip created by American cartoonists Brant Parker and Johnny Hart. Beginning in 1964, the strip follows the antics of a large cast of characters in a shabby medieval kingdom called "Id". From time to time, the King refers to his subjects as "Idiots". (The title is a play on The Wizard of Oz, combined with the Freudian psychological term Id, which represents the instinctive and primal part of the human psyche.)

The Wizard of Id deals with the goings-on of the run-down and oppressed mythical kingdom of Id. It follows people from all corners of the kingdom, but concentrates on the court of a tyrannical dwarfish monarch known only as "the King". The cast is large for a daily cartoon strip, and there are recurring jokes for a variety of continuing characters and for the kingdom itself.

While it's set a thousand years ago, the strip's humor occasionally satirizes modern American culture, and deliberate anachronisms are rampant. Technology changes to suit whatever a gag requires; a battle with spears and arrows might be followed by a peasant using an ATM. The general trend is that even though the personalities of the characters are well known, their surroundings will morph to allow a good joke. For instance, in some strips the King is curiously elected to his monarchial position, (albeit through rigged ballots). The aspects that stay the same, however, are that Id is in the middle of nowhere, home to a large castle surrounded by a moat. The King and his subjects run an inept army perpetually at war with "the Huns", while the unhappy, overtaxed peasants (or Idiots) make little money as farmers and stablehands to keep modest lifestyles.

Like most other newspaper comics still active in the 21st century, The Wizard of Id has an online presence - read it at Creators Syndicate.


Tropes used in The Wizard of Id include:

Man: I want a potion that will add forty years to my life!
Wizard: Try this.
(Drinks it - flash - man is now old and bent)
Old Man: ...Let me rephrase that.

    • And another instance where Sir Rodney is participating in an archery tournament.

Rodney: Give me a potion that will make me hit the bull's eye.
Wizard: Here. [Gives potion]
[Rodney Drinks potion and proceeds to take his shot]
[BAM]
[Cut to Rodney now impaled halfway through the target].