The King is a Fink

I happened to catch last week a Wizard of Id "Classics" in which The King and Sir Rodney were trying to catch The Lone Haranguer, a character who I don't think was ever seen (at least not clearly) and was known for shouting "The King is a fink!" much to the annoyance of The King. The idea that The King was regularly called a fink and that he tried to catch/imprison anyone who said as much was a running gag during Johnny Hart's tenure on the strip. Indeed, the first Wizard of Id collection from 1969 was titled "The King Is a Fink!" and the very first strip included in that collection uses a "the king is a fink" gag.

But it occurs to me that I haven't seen that gag for many years. Admittedly, I'm not a regular reader of Wizard of Id but I do follow some folks on social media who do nothing but post the day's comic strips and I can't recall the last time I saw a "the king is a fink" joke of any sort.

So I did a little digging. The most recent instance I can find of a variation on that joke is from 2014. Much later than I would've anticiapted.

It's not a very good gag, in my opinion, since I think the intent is to show that The King is the one who posted the new "definitions" to counter the graffiti's message, but his carrying the spray can suggests he was the one doing the original message to begin with. Regardless, it's a very clear indication the gag was still running after Johnny Hart's passing in 2007.

In fact, by 2014, the strip was being written by Hart's grandson Mason Mastroianni, who would additionally take over artistic duties from Jeff T. Parker a year later. But since Mastroianni had been writing the strip since 2007, that means he helped work on -- if not completely conceived of -- that strip I posted above. Meaning he is fully aware of the fink joke and its history in the strip.

I bring this up because I think that, given the current political situation in the United States, Mastroianni absolutely should make fink jokes a regular, if not downright frequent, thing. A small-minded, petty tyrant who takes incredible offense to the weakest of insults? Mastroianni could run "the King is a fink" jokes literally every day and they would be 100% topical to whatever the day's headlines were. I'm not sure how big the readership of Wizard of Id is these days, but I would bet regular fink jokes would bring it a lot more attention!

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