Damn, they made Max put on a suit for this, but Slylock gets to keep wearing his goofy cape
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Wizard of Id, 2/2/26

Thanks to the several faithful readers who pointed out that the Wizard of Id I featured a week ago is reusing the exact same art as a strip from 2015, except the dialogue has been rewritten to be horny instead of bloodthirsty. Let’s hear it for the victory of eros over thanatos? I guess??? Not sure if this one is a repeat too, but I do find the backstory reveal interesting, in that we learn that it was the Wizard’s wife who turned him on to “this,” though it’s not entirely clear what “this” is (football, the TV set, a dimension outside Id’s pseudo-medieval setting, etc.).
Slylock Fox, 2/2/26

Look, I joke a lot about the arbitrary nature of justice in the Forest Kingdom, but years ago I was a juror on an honest to god drug conspiracy case in Baltimore, and there were significantly fewer witnesses than this, so maybe I’ve been overhasty.
Pluggers, 2/2/26

Oh, what’s that, pluggers? You think you’re trapped in a never-ending slog, where each day is exactly like the last and you never make any kind of forward progress? Well, so do the rest of us! You’re not special!


70 replies to “Damn, they made Max put on a suit for this, but Slylock gets to keep wearing his goofy cape”
Slylock Fox-Slick Smitty was held in contempt of court for complaining about the judge wasn’t a kangaroo in this kangaroo court.
MW-It’ll be crullers at noon.
FC-The trees are desperate. They need the money. They have no green.
Wizard of Id-The Wizard has turned the entire team into horcruxes for the day that the masses rise up against him and try to kill him.
WoI: “This” refers to her naughty bits. She’s rueing her long marriage to the wizard.
Pluggers steadfastly refuse to listen to any radio station other than the local boomer oldies channel.
Wary Morth:
Fly, butterfly! Flap away from this madhouse as fast as possible!
______________________________
Zits:
Ni…………..?
?
?Nihilist? Nincompoop? Ninny? Nimrod? Nintendo? Nicaraguan?
______________________________
Wrecks Moregone:
“Let’s see, pendicitis, that means inflammation of the pend…the pend… (reaches for medical dictionary) I knew I should’ve paid attention in anatomy class!”
______________________________
Wary Morth:
Toby (on turning up with Sunny and Rosie riding on each shoulder and being denied admittance): “I thought it was Parrotery Royale!”
Id: I know the sports betting situation is really bleak out there at the moment, but it will get even worse when DraftKings let you wager your immortal soul on a 10-leg parlay.
Pluggers: Pluggers listening to the oldies station on their alarm clock for a few seconds while they find the SNOOZE button now make up 90% of the remaining audience for music radio.
Slylock Fox:
Not sure, but you can see that the judge didn’t give a hoot.
Pluggers:
Why is that annoying Sonny Bono fellow singing in that nasal tone about the 21st letter of the alphabet — ‘I’ve Got “U”, Babe’ ???”
MW: I just had a horrifying vision that after Toby leaves the birds alone again we are about to see a ridiculously over-the-top stereotype of an illegal immigrant speaking with a thick accent smashing the window to reclaim his ill-gotten property.
RMMD: The ‘pendicitis? Is that like ‘the croup’ or ‘the plumb high-sterics’? Good to see Marjorie Main here is bringing a little touch of roots country to our medical storyline.
JP: ‘…Plus she’s still rich instead of mortaged to the hilt like the jailbirds we are, so if we play our cards right you and I could be on Easy Street once Judgey Wudgey finally keels over from all the booze I’ve been plying him with!’
@Where’s Rocky?: Those still exist? I thought they all shut down when satellite radio took all their customers (the ones who didn’t die off, that is).
Slylock Fox:
Can you figure out the order in which the animals testified?
Sure. Let me just see the transcript.
I glanced at Mary Worth and honestly thought it was one of the parrots asking Toby to lunch. Then I realized that couldn’t be so, as the question wasn’t in Spanish.
Slylock Fox:
From the looks of things, the rabbit and the beaver should be headed, right after they testify, to the offices of the local endodontist, Dr. Mel Aklusian.
Slylock Fox: Slick Smitty robs a preschool, wouldn’t one assume that you know, there’d be KIDS as witnesses?
While presumably the elderly beaver is a teacher, hut what is this phone-a-holic teen, big thuggish looking bear, and narcoleptic stork doing around a preschool?
Were they cafeteria staff? Do preschools have a cafeteria outside of juice boxes and sippy cups?
Darn you Slylock for making me think about this!
Pluggers – For pluggers, every day feels like Groundhog Day, because pluggers are furry quadrupeds. Also because every day brings another Pluggers cartoon that’s nearly indistinguishable from all the others.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Another flat tire for you”
“Put it with the others. I have a ton of these to fix”
“So you’re happy with my business strategy?”
“Yeah, except for one thing…”
“I still don’t think we should bill our customers for the thumbtacks”
RMMD: Fancy vernacular from Tildy. I’d expect her to say that the young ‘un was lookin’ like the northbound end of a southbound pig, or at least that he was feelin’ a mite peaky.
DtM: What is harder to teach Dennis; respect or prepositions?
SLYLICK: I’ve had jury duty a fantastic four times and I’ve got some issues here:
– Where IS the jury?
– Smitty’s lawyer couldn’t find ONE human witness? Incompetent.
– Slylock isn’t a lawyer, why is he standing there?
– Did Max Mouse go rogue and steal that money? Otherwise, what’s the point?
Pluggers:
“I can’t put my ‘little hand’ in yours,” grouses the Plugger. “For starters, I’m never drawn as having a small hand. More importantly, my ‘fingers’ are always depicted as malformed protuberances that would be impossible to form into a grip!”
Oops. SlyLOck
Pluggers… are annoyed towards all of the groundhogs coming in from Upper Groundhogdia and taking their jobs.
Why would Pluggers set their alarm for 6:00? Pluggers are old and retired and haven’t done an honest day’s work in years.
@MKay: It was maybe a bench trial? (Where one doesn’t need a jury)
Pluggers:
[Rabbit]: “What’s up, Doc?”
[Defense counsel]: “Move to strike!”
Luann: For cryin’ out loud, GET UP AND WALK OUT. This class is actively wasting your time. Real people are walking out of real classrooms and jobs in protest of current events, but you’re staying to listen to your high school guidance counselor talk about self-published romance novel covers? In hopes that she might get to the point, which is “career paths” – something all three of you should have gotten years ago? And now Les wants to sleep? What on earth does he need to rest from?
Phantom I think they forgot to hit “pause” on the dailies’ timeline when they went to the Sunday story – Either Cook ran across the compound to get Patrolwoman, or she caught up with the group just as Cook started to have a massive heart attack from the excitement.
GT guest artist alert! Look! Keri with large but not ridiculous earrings! Are they trying to show us that any other pro out there could do a better job than the official artist?
Pluggers: Well, Leechburg is only one county over from Punxsutawney, so if anybody has a right to this observation…
WoI So, I guess the Wizard of Id team saw what a raging success Gearhead Gertie was and decided to transition to something similar except football? Say what you will, I think GG could use some magical elements to it.
SFx: I like how Smitty’s defense seems to be just yelling “INNOCENT!” dramatically at each and every question he’s asked. He knows that when dealing with animals, concise, repeated messages are key,
Pluggers Bearman rolls over to see a groundhog resting his head on the other pillow “Gerald, we can’t keep doing this…“
Dammit, Pluggers, do better. How do you do this joke with a bear, rather than introduce a #lovable #relatable groundhog character? They’re cute, they’re fat, they hibernate: seems like exactly your core demographic.
@Pozzo: I just saw a headline the other day about how Punxsutawney Phil is the least accurate of all the weather-predicting rodents, so, uh, anyone?
The Wizard of Id: Does anyone else think it’s a bad idea for a medieval wizard to “put his entire soul” into something, especially a demonic entity such as televised sports? No? Just me?
@Bob Tice:
Oops. That’s Slylock Fox, not Pluggers.
GT: The last “Foxy” I remember is “Foxy Ferrell.” She was a stripper in The Choirboys. I think she dated Baxter Slate and that she trimmed her pubes into a heart and died them red. If both were put on a scale, I am not certain that Fate could see a way to raise one of them up.
Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids: A justice system that closes its witness list with Theresa Beaver (née Defarge) knitting away while she recommends the guillotine for Slick Smitty can’t be all that. On the other hand, it is an improvement on what we have at the moment, so hooray for animal justice, I guess?
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – Has anyone told Johnny that Ed Gein was the first person to write a book with an appendix in it?
BG&SS: “No one’s gonna pay to see a feller eat five-alarm chili. That ear hair, however, is probably worth a quarter.”
DtM: Margaret dutifully says her line for the bit but she’s not happy about it. “I wasn’t classically trained for this!“
Phantom: Ok – so mining is for gemstones? And the cook was playing the long game waiting for his chance?
RMMD: “ C’mon Aunt Tilda, you are a Vassar graduate, knock off the roots country Granny from Beverly Hillbilly fake accent”
MW: Is that Ian on the phone or MW or someone new?
JP: “Sure Neddy isn’t blood family, but she has our same hairdo, facial structure and face it, has never faced murder charges or multiple class A felonies and being wanted by the US Marshal service.”
GT: He may look disshelved, but THE FOX knows how to sell! Had that Vette sitting on the lot for months waiting for the right … sucker. Also another guest artist – this one is good with vehicles.
DT: I get it now. DT always juts his arm out like that when a call comes in because there is a short. There is a shock that shoots up his arm forcing him to straighten his elbow. Tracy is too proud to admit there is any flaw to his gadget. He can’t ask Diet Smith to fix it. He is sensitive to Diet Smith’s feelings: Smith had a great idea with the wrist radio phone but missed out on all that sweet cell phone money – to this day, he can’t talk about it.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
I just saw a headline the other day about how Punxsutawney Phil is the least accurate of all the weather-predicting rodents, so, uh, anyone?
A co-worker came to work one Monday after spending a long weekend in Punxsutawney during the event and said it was basically a town wide drunk fest which might explain the fallacious forecasts.
So what is the Wizard’s favorite NFL team? Purple symbolized royalty in his era, so it’s probably not the Vikings or Ravens. Nobody’s favorite color is teal, so that eliminates the Dolphins and Jaguars.
I’m guessing it’s the Raiders. His robe is black and white, and the Raiders have a cool but very outdated mystique that a casual fan might be attracted to. The Jets are my #2 guess. They rock the green, they’re in an important city, and they’re still living off Super Bowl III. And rooting for either of those teams would certainly make you throw things at the TV.
SFox: I don’t want to sound Classist (Class Mammalia vs. Class Aves), but what do birds understand about milk?
MW: Toby shows up in the lobby to meet Mary with a parrot on each shoulder.
“We’ve talked about day-drinking before, Toby.”
@pugfuggly: To be honest, I’ve seen statements made in trials on par with that.
The rabbit hole goes down pretty deep.
The Wizard clearly lives in a pseuo-European monarchy. There’s no way he’s calling anything just “football” unless it’s two teams in shorts kicking a round ball around a pitch. But I may be overthinking a comic strip where a medieval sorcerer has a CRT television and a modern couch.
***
I don’t believe that bird is allowed within 500 feet of a pre-school.
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Pluggers wake up every day angry that the night didn’t welcome them into the sweet embrace of eternal rest. They’ve never been more relatable.
Max is probably looking for a vending machine for a package of cheese brownies or cheese soda.
Cheese brownies… there’s Baja’s next Late Thread Cuisine!
@Tabby Lavalamp: Yes, it’s very relatable. Because I am also angry that Pluggers have not been welcomed into the sweet embrace of eternal rest.
Wizard of Id – “Even found a team with my favorite colors.” Which I will not specify, and the subject WILL NEVER BE MENTIONED AGAIN
Also, just to note. I couldn’t get onto the comments yesterday.
One of my extensions was blocking it, but only for that day.
I removed that extension but I still couldn’t get on.
FC – Come on, Dolly, let’s hear you mangle the word “ecdysiast.”
MW:
June shuffled into the kitchen and reached for the steaming cup of coffee that Karen was holding out for her. She stopped and looked around in surprise.
“The 45 gallons of green ink are gone! Color me surprised! I didn’t think Sid would follow through. You must have really intimidated him, Karen.”
“Well, I think it’s not a bad thing to keep him in line on occasion. Generally, he’s a great guy. Anyway, it was his intern that screwed up. But I’m glad we have the space back–I thought if I barked my shins on those boxes one more time…!
There was a knock at the door, and Karen rose to answer it. A delivery man had another box. Karen eyed it suspiciously, and frowned when she saw Sid’s name on the return address. “What’s this, now?” she demanded, signing for the package and closing the door. “God help me if it’s more green ink. Wait, there’s a note….”
Karen opened the attached envelope and read aloud: Dear Ladies, Sorry again about that mix-up with the green ink. Hope this supply of pink ink will stand you in good stead for drawings that feature Toby and, hey! You’re reminding me that I’ve acquired some new clients and I want to offer you a freebie appearance by McQueen, one of my star lepidopterans! She’s pink, also, and I might add IN the pink, unlike the Doves o’ Love which you might have heard caught a virus from the parrots and are now recovering in the local aviary. (Funny story: Intern mistook my directions and went to the local apiary where he managed to get stung by several hundred honey bees when he tried to put the Doves o’ Love into the box.) Anyway, I figured you could use the pink for Toby and McQueen. We’ll give the butterfly a try and see how folks respond. It’s a nice harbinger of spring, amirite? I gotta say, that damned groundhog managed to get this morning’s script wrong and now look where we are. Talk to me soon. Ciao.”
June wrinkled her nose thoughtfully. “I think I can do butterflies. At least they’re outside, right? I mean, we’re not going to have Wilbur start collecting them or anything, are we? Like, he pins them to a board as a new hobby?”
Karen looked up, interested. “Huh!”
The wizard does gesture based magic, right? Or did some poor referee just get struck blind by his outburst, permanently denied their vision and livelihood for daring to rule against someone wearing colors the wizard likes? Just how serious is the regret over getting him interested?
Slick Smitty is accused of stealing milk. Which of these witnesses was not in the industrial milking facility near the school, tethered to machines to provide the youth with fresh milk? Which witness was not in their assigned place, making eggs? Because there’s something suspicious in a citizen that’s not providing according to their abilities.
Slylock is calling witnesses to the crime, so I get why he’s in court. I’d assume he’d be a witness, not some sort of police-prosecutor, but I don’t understand the beast folks’ ways. It’s fine.
Why is Max there, though? Is he just always attached to Slylock? Do the bonds of predator and prey run that deep? Or did he want to wear his Pride Parade suit to court on Groundhog Day? If so, I think that’s neat!
Dennis the Menace: Mr. Wilson has eyes in his pants.
Slylock: Smitty “reappropriated” the school’s milk as part of his newfound white nationalist whole milk identity (Yes, that’s a thing).
Crankshaft : WRITE THEM DOWN IN A NOTEBOOK YOU KEEP NEXT TO YOUR COMPUTER
BATIUKJEFF YOU COLOSSAL DUMBASS**********
Luann : …yeah, Luann needs to walk out of this class. Then, go directly to Bernice to talk about this fiasco, and Bernice can go “Luann, if Mrs Fogarty is the author of those books, she’s not only my favorite book author, she’s a near-universally critically praised multi-millionaire.”, and then Luann can be all “OH NO I THREW AWAY PROPER MENTORING FOR SUCCESS BECAUSE I JUDGED A BOOK BY ITS COVER”…
…Though that sequence of events would make more sense if Mrs Fogarty was teaching CREATIVE WRITING, not whatever the hell “Career Paths” is…
***********
Pluggers : see as the Bill Murray movie as aspirational. Come on, they already are stuck in a rut of everyday being the same, being free of their actions having permanent consequences, and also the passage of time being stopped means their ever-increasing decrepitude due to aging ALSO stops!
**********
Slylock Fox : By “stealing milk from a pre-school”, they mean “harassing kindergarteners (specifically, goats, cows and ewes)”
…too far?…Pluggers are pretty sure they have the acerbic charm of a Bill Murray, but not like an artsy, Wes Anderson-era Bill Murray, they’re not into that. And I guess not in his SNL-through-Ghostbusters years, a little too high energy for a Plugger’s tastes. Pluggers are very fond of Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties though. Did you know they go to England in that one? Ha ha, imagine, Garfield! In England! (turning off the alarm and falling back asleep while chuckling) I bet they don’t even make lasagna the same there.
SlylickFox And Comix For Kinx: Can you guess in which order the bear ate the other witnesses?
PLUGGERS: For Pluggers, everyday feels like Groundhog day…especially since “their sort” moved in right next door! What’s happening to this neighborhood these days?
Pluggers – I’d be more interested in a Groundhog Day-themed panel in which Andy Bear mauls Ned Ryerson.
I’d love for this whole Career Paths class to be a test. “You see, Luann Tara and Les, the first step to having a successful career is recognizing what is and isn’t a productive use of your time. I’ve been intentionally wasting your time – which you figured out on your own – and you three idiots are still sitting there pretending to pay attention. The rest of the class left at least 20 minutes ago! That’s what you were SUPPOSED to do! The point of this class was to get you to start asserting yourselves, and thinking about what you do and don’t want in life. You failed. Miserably. You took the class, showed up late for it, and suffered in silence, like the parentally-dominated, browbeaten schlubs you are. Now, all three of you, get lost.”
“And by the way: yes, Les, I know you took naps in my office during high school. I let you do it. I didn’t want to waste my time with you any more than you wanted to waste your time with me. Thanks for all the unofficial break time you gave me, which I used to start writing my first novel. Getting the point yet?”
In my experience, college does occasionally throw this kind of “don’t let schooling interfere with your education” lesson at you.
JP: “I’m having a dash of coffee in my brandy. How do you take yours?”
@Hibbleton: #35: Yeah, saw the whole Punxatawney Phil ceremony on the morning news once. The mayor and city council, decked out like Mr. Monopoly with top hats and tails, drunk out of their gourds, yank that poor fellow out of his cage at 5AM while it’s still dark outside and hold the terrified animal up to all the flashing cameras to make the big announcement.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Oh, come on, C-hu. You know we wouldn’t send one of our regulation Groundhogs for a gig at Pluggers! Not to mention the fact none would be willing to go over to that place…. you know what I’m talkin’ about. I don’t see YOU appearing there, either.
I guess it just shows the state of our current society when Groundhog Day is mostly missing from the Comics venue. There was a time when it was a red-letter day for us – had to scout for weeks ahead to fill the demand. Yeah, good times…
I think the problem started when every little burg and hamlet started hiring their own amateur prognosticators, trying to promo a money-making “festival” – and of course the weather predictions lost all credibility as a result.
So what’s left for the traditional Groundhog pros? Some of our clients now call themselves Woodchucks to avoid typecasting, and a few have even adopted the use of prosthetic tails to tap into the Beaver-role market. Never thought I’d live to see it…
Slylock Fox:
It’s a trick question. The answer is that none of them testified, in any order. As is evident from the depiction in the first panel, the prospective witnesses weren’t sequestered before testifying. Defense counsel thus objected to the proffer of any of them as witnesses because they were all together, able to discuss one another’s testimony, and the Court struck them all from the witness list. Without any witnesses to call, Slylock lost his case, which he would have done, anyway, because he disrespected the dignity of the Court inasmuch as he and his sidekick wore hats into the courtroom.
The moral here, of course, is that crime pays, and now Slick Smitty is free to continue his life of unrestrained lactic kleptomania.
JP: What, a Parker/Spencer/Driver is making and pouring her own coffee? Isn’t Marie supposed to magically manifest herself whenever one of the entitled bitches desires some java?
FC: I like the look of disinterested ennui on Jeffy’s face. As dumb as he is he still doesn’t believe any of Dolly’s horse squeeze but is just playing along. He’s so afraid of her that he knows if he doesn’t agree she’ll go narc on him over some trumped up charge.
@Hibbleton: you mean, it isn’t the heart warming place where people are fundamentally good hearted and kind?? Once again, movies have misled me.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Her life is a whole NEGATIVE lesson on a career. Her true passion is as a romance novelist. Her “day job” is as a counselor and like many artists working a day job they really didn’t like, they do a half-ass job!
Pluggers – Wasn’t Gus Groundhog one of the former Plugger characters? I think he got bounced in favor of the Kanagaroo/Dog lady (a Garoodoodle?).
Luann is hoping for a rote training class, like multiplication tables in grade school? This is supposed to be an open-ended conversation with someone who’s not going to send you to detention. Behave like something akin to an adult.
Crankshaft: I don’t want to do this to Marshall Crenshaw but I’m glad that XTC or Danny Wilson aren’t name checked. Yet.
GT: Welcome to the wonderful world of adolescent unmarried male insurance rate autos, Peanut. Oh, and I hope you’ve got a riding mechanic.
Gasoline Alley: Gertie knows that if she calls it palliative care, she cannot be disciplined for providing any mood-altering drugs to a patient. Especially if it’s in food.
Blondie: The chart is also going backwards. If only Dithers & Co. could make money off a mundane commodity like time travel.
JP: Ann’s one to talk about strangers, having been completely absent circa 1965-circa 2024…
I can remember when I’d first noticed the changing of the guard at JP, when Marciuliano replaced Wilson. I seem to remember Neddy and the late Godiva Danube going into business together, and failing to launch when the place burned to the ground and Godiva left Neddy holding the bag. Following several years of our heroes writing best-selling novels, cleaning up at casinos and having a Mideastern oil tycoon showering them with riches for no reason I could discern, this was quite the shock!
Pluggers: When Bill Murray’s Phil Connors discovered he was living the same day over and over in Groundhog Day, he tuned his clock radio to an oldies station, ranted at people who didn’t care about his opinions, drove badly, ate lots of unhealthy food, unsuccessfully hit on a co-worker, was pressured into buying too much insurance, attended community events, did auto repairs, did chainsaw art, bought tickets to a monster truck rally, and finally decided that life is ultimately meaningless so he might as well focus on little things he could do to pass the time. He was a plugger!
@Anonymous: Re: Luann:
It would make more sense because multi-millionaire writers love slumming it at the local underfunded
daycarecommunity college, when they can get more prestigious gigs at more prominent universities (or even get their own writing seminars. Or even just…not, since one of the benefits of being super-rich is that you can devote yourself to your art full-time without having to worry about a second job, especially one you just admitted you didn’t really like that much.)But we are not out to make sense. We are out to make nostalgia, since the point of this is the recreate the (sigh) “glory days” of the high-school era by bringing back (sigh again) “old favorites” and ignore that Luann (both the person and the strip) is floundering in college, having alienated a good portion of her cast.
Slylock Fox: The bear’s head looks like a different art style/artist than everything else.