Johnny Hart on how The Wizard of Id started

MARSCHALL: ...We haven't talked much about Wizard of Id. When did you come up with that idea? Did you always have in mind to collaborate with Brant?
HART: No, as a matter of fact I had Jack [Caprio] slated to do that, but for whatever reason he didn't feel that he was up to it or didn't want to do it.
MARSCHALL: You had the idea earlier?
HART: Well, let's see, 1958 [B.C.'s debut] to '64 [The Wiz's debut]... I probably had the idea in 1960 because I shelved it for four years and I felt really unenthusiastic about it and suddenly the light bulb came on and I said, "Brant!" Actually, Brant had been around since the inception of the Wizard. One night we were all down at my house and I laid it on these guys -ー Jack and Brant and Curls. And I said I have this idea and I have the drawingsーthe King is going to look like a playing card; that's the way he started out. And the Jester is going to be a Jester and everybody is going to look like what they are. I laid it all out for them and we got like guys do when you've got something new -ー we had this nice session going, ideas were flying around, we were having fun, and then we began to pursue it. Somewhere I have a thick package full of preprinted title lines, Wizard by Hart and Caprio, laying around here.
Everything was ready to go and it just kind of fizzled. I just put in on the shelf and went about my business. Then about four years later I said, "I've really got to do this thing," that's when I thought about Brant. So I called him and said, "If I write this thing. would you draw it?" And he said, "I'd love to." "OK -ー we're on!" So we made this arrangement to meet in this hotel room -ー at that time Brant was in Virginia -ー a sleazy, fleabag hotel in New York City. I had all of the paper and the gags for about 24 strips and we had our bottles of ink. It was this terrible hotel room but it was about a block away from the Herald-Tribune, around the corner from it, We just holed up there for several days and we drew 24 Wizards. He penciled some and I penciled some and I'd ink some of his and he'd ink some of mine. We just went back and forth doing all this stuff and we put together the initial four weeks of the Wizard of ld, and as we did them we taped them up on the walls of the hotel room. The beds that we had were like these old bunks that they used to have in the barracks in World War II…

When we finally taped the last one up on the wall, I called over to the syndicate and asked them if they wanted to see a new comic strip. "Really? Sure! Bring it in." "Can't do that." "Why not?" "Because they're taped all over the walls." Twenty minutes later they came over. Brant and I were running around kicking beer bottles under the beds, I'm in there shaving and Brant is in his shorts, he's not even dressed, and here are these three syndicate guys in their black suits, white shirts, black ties -ー they looked like Mafia -- and they come into the room shaking hands and I come out in my shorts with lather all over my face. I go over and kick another beer bottle under the bed. It's called Wizard of Id, I say, we tell them about the lead characters. And they start walking around the walls hike they're in a museum, with their hands behind their backs, in this flea-bag with masking tape all over the walls.They're going "hm, hm" like art connoisseurs.
Every so often they kick a bottle under the bed and Brant and I are just sitting there on the bunks and watching them go around the room -- a few chuckles here and there, yeah. When they were all done, two of them turned around and the other one sat down on the bed and said, "Well, we think you guys are disgusting, but the strip is great." So, we all shook hands and he said, "We'll take it." And that was the whole trick.