Joshua K. and Hinches both sent this in: “This appears to be a joke about redaction or censorship, but it would seem like it would need to have *some* visible text to make sense.” and “Is this supposed to be some sort of political statement? What an I missing, besides all the dialogue??
Was this an earlier Sunday Wizard of Id at one time?
Comics I Don't Understand 
It’s a reference to how the Epstein Files came out and there’d be entire documents with everything redacted.
That’s the general assumption, but I’m not convinced. There’s no actual joke here. Without a joke, it’s a nakedly political (not necessarily partisan) statement, akin to saying “There’s no strip today because the Epstein files have not been released.” Not only is this out of character for the creators, it’s also too subtle by half.
An actual strip about the Epstein files would make an effort to point that out via an actual punchline, even if the rest of the strip appeared heavily redacted. This has every appearance of being an actual strip that encountered some sort of production error.
No way is that a production error. The text isn’t the only thing redacted. It’s absurd to think that was done unintentionally. I agree that it’s an Epstein files reference. It’s also absolutely in character for the creators, who regularly use the strip as an outlet for their political ideas.
‘What’s the joke?’
‘It’s an Epstein files reference’.
‘Naaaah…THAT’S not it!’
REDACTED
Do you suppose it’s significant that (1) we have the king’s speech redacted, then (2) somebody Rodney’s height but in the king’s position is redacted, then (3) Wiz is in that position and his speech is redacted?
Is this maybe an older comic with the text redacted (as opposed to a totally new cartoon)
might make a difference (might not though)
Anyone have the skills to find it?
The Wizard of Id has been going very political of late. That’s really all it is.
CIDU once covered this kind of a situation a long time ago on CIDU; In that case, the strip was created with the ability to put different languages in the speech clouds.
Somewhere in the processing on the way to “printing”, the text got left out.
The error was fixed on line after a few days. I cannot remember if anyone submitted a correct picture from a newspaper before it was fixed on line.
Oops; the conversation about the missing cloud test, that happened several decades ago, was probably more on GoComics than onCIDU.
I think there’s almost no way this was some sort of error.