Brant Parker visiting wounded sailors in 1971

Brant Parker and his scowling King of "Id" get together to arouse laughter in patients of military hospitals in the Washington, D.C. area at a V.I.P. (Very Important Patients) "Time-Out Cafe" held at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.

13-0108, scanned from Navy Medicine magazine, July 1971, courtesy of BUMED Office of Medical History.

Palm restaurant caricature pictures incidentally in Post

Palm restaurant caricature pictures appeared incidentally in Post today, in an article on waiters who remember orders as opposed to writing them down. The article, oddly enough, appeared above the fold on the front page so one could seen Brant Parker's Wizard of Id in the background by the waiter's head.

Brant Parker used to live in Centreville

Brant Parker used to live in Centreville back when it wasn't a farm of tract houses. See his wife's reminiscences in "‘Wizard of Id’ cartoonist’s wife makes Lynchburg home" By Liz Barry, The Lynchburg News & Advance August 25, 2009.

I remember being a kid 30 years ago and reading the Wizard of Id, B.C. and Crock in those paperback reprints. For a while there the Hart-Parker-Rechin team was unbeatable.

Wash Post does us another favor - Stop already!

Today's Zits was shrunk so the Post could inform us that it's shrinking the comics section as a favor to us. The following isn't online so I've typed it all (emphasis beyond the title is mine):

To Our Readers:

The Sunday comics will look a little different beginning next week. A new page design will allow us to combine the two comics sections into one convenient section with nearly all of our extensive offering of comics, puzzles and features.

To accommodate the more compact layout, "The Wizard of Id" strip and the "Hints From Heloise" column will no longer appear in the comics section, and the size of several of our larger comics as well as the Samurai Sudoku puzzle will be slightly reduced. Heloise can still be found in the Tuesday Style section, and "The Wizard of Id" appears on washingtonpost.com daily, including Sunday.

All of the other Sunday comics and features will remain, including the Mini Page, although some will be located on a different page than you're used to. We hope you'll find the combined section easier to navigate. We welcome your feedback. Write: Comics Editor, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071; email comics@washpost.com or call 202-334-4775.

So, if I'm reading this correctly, for our convenience, they've reduced the section, dropped Wizard of Id, and shrunk the rest. I don't understand why they just couldn't move the puzzles to say... the Magazine Section... and leave the comics, but that's why I'm just a blogger. Also, I don't really understand why editors think that actually offering you less in the paper you pay for will make you more inclined to buy one. Perhaps someone can explain this to me?

What a great week for comics in DC! As with Rob Ullman's situation, I'll be sending a letter to the Post, suggesting that Less is not actually More and that 1984 is well in the past. And it appears that Cul de Sac will not be moving to the Sunday section either, and presumably not appearing during the week.