Brant Parker, who died Sunday at 86, was co-founder of the comic strip “The Wizard of Id,” a reliably wacky feature since 1964.

Parker created “The Wizard of Id” in partnership with cartoonist Johnny Hart, whose “B.C.” was already a success in syndication. Parker did most of the art on the strip, with the pair splitting writing chores. Hart died last week at 76.

At one time appearing in more than 1,000 newspapers, “The Wizard of Id” for the most part steered clear of current events, consistent with its setting somewhere in the Middle Ages.

Still, the strip managed to tap into the modern world for some of its humor.

“Teflon is a juicy word for us. It’s a funny word, everyone knows it and it says a lot if used right,” Parker told the Los Angeles Times in 1986. “Like a guard saying, ‘Teflon underwear.'”

But most of the action was more stereotypically pre-modern, with the wizard casting futile spells to the crack of a lightning bolt and the nondaring Sir Rodney questing for his not-so-bright maiden, Gwen. The cast of characters was rounded out by a drunken jester, Bung, a troubadour, and enough dimwitted and greedy villagers to fill a “Frankenstein” sequel. The grouchy king — modeled at first by Hart on a playing card — presiding over this piebald assembly evolved over the years.

“The king became short because we used to kid John about being short and a lot of the short gags began to slide over into the strip,” Parker said in the Times interview. “He just kept getting smaller, and as he shrunk, the nose got bigger and bigger.”

If Hart was the king, the taller Parker identified with the ganglier Sir Rodney. “Rodney is my love,” he told to Omaha World-Herald in 1985. “I feel very close to him, but I don’t know why.”

Born in Los Angeles on August 26, 1920, Parker was a high school cartoonist who learned at the feet of the Los Angeles Times Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Russell. After attending art school, he served in the Navy during World War II and then got a job at the Disney studios, where he specialized in Donald Duck cartoons. In 1947, he followed Mary Louise Sweet, who would become his wife, to her hometown of Endicott, N.Y., where he settled and got a job as a staff artist for the Binghamton Press. He met Hart while judging a local high school art contest in which Hart had an entry. The two became friends, though their collaboration did not start until the 1960s, by which time Parker had worked for a decade as an art director for IBM.

The original idea for “The Wizard of Id” seems to have been Hart’s, but the two developed the characters together, then took their creation to show to Creators Syndicate in New York. After a long night spent in suitably inspired preparation, the two were readying their drawings when the syndicate head knocked on their hotel room door.

“I was in my shorts, John was shaving, beer bottles were everywhere — it was a real mess. We had taped the cartoons all on the walls,” Parker said in the Times interview. “They got to the end, and he looked at us and said, ‘We think you guys are disgusting, but we love the strip.'”

“The Wizard of Id” was eventually collected in 13 books with titles such as “Help Stamp Out Grapes” (1978) and “My Vat Runneth Over!” (1989). Parker retired in 1997, and the strip continues under his son, Jeff Parker.

Parker also drew the strip “Crock,” featuring French legionnaires in a sort of eternal beau geste, and the short-lived “Goosemeyer.” He illustrated “Of Cabbages and Kings” (1984), a compendium of cabbage recipes.