You’re five times more likely to encounter a bone-in ham in the comics than you are in real life
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Blondie, 10/18/25
God, I love how genuinely sad Dagwood looks in panel two. Sure, he loves his wife more than anything, but he also made some big promises and sweeping declarations to that sandwich when they were alone together. He’s sorry it had to hear this now, in its last moments before it slides unchewed down his gullet. He hopes it will still remember the good times they’ve had together, and the genuine affection in which he’s always held it.
Mary Worth, 10/18/25
I know that Mary and Olive billed this visit as a “mini-vacation” but I have to say “all I had time to do on my cross-country trip is briefly meet some dogs in a condo parking lot and then almost die in a hot air balloon mishap” is truly mini indeed. I guess it’s possible that Olive’s parents heard about the accident on the news, or, given that this is the year 2025, saw a clip of it in a “CRAZY HOT AIR BALLOON MISHAPS” YouTube compilation, and decided that was a little much even by their notoriously lax parenting standards, so they summoned her home early because “we think she has to start going to school or whatever soon.”
Pluggers, 10/18/25
I know pluggers are tired of being told they could learn a thing or two from young people today, but: hey, pluggers! The young people today aren’t answering their phones at all, at any time of day! You too could be that free!
87 replies to “You’re five times more likely to encounter a bone-in ham in the comics than you are in real life”
I hope Blondie isn’t going to go full Six Chix on the sexy sandwich issue.
Blondie – Ida Knoe how insect man ever landed Blondie….
MW – …and my tummy-brain is anxious for that trip to see the Titanic….
Pluggers – This is absolutely your last opportunity for extended warranty coverage for your 2006 Buick LaCrosse….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
MW:
“Mary, the nickname for our plane, painted on the side of it, is ‘Lost.’ What a funny name for a plane, huh? — go figure!”
RMMD-Augie’s book is called ‘The Last Leaf’.
MW-“And remember, Olive, don’t tell about all we’ve done.”
FC-Let’s hope Sam didn’t chew through page three.
Blondie : On one hand, Blondie’s only competition is going to disappear in 0.0003 seconds. On the other hand, she should be more concerned that Dagwood compares her to something he devours and destroys so casually, by the hundreds.
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Crankshaft : I feel like “Crankshaft brags about how his plan to repel deer works perfectly, oblivious that a bunch of deer are devouring
the Jeff&Pamhis lawn right behind him” was a better punchline to this week.Heck, the last two strips could have been switched; just put a soap-on-a-rope around Lillian’s neck yesterday! (the fact that the deer was closer to HER even adds a touch of “Crankshaft’s dumb plan to use soap to repel deer is actually having the opposite effect”).
***********
Frazz : Joke’s on you, Caufield. I’m a fall person because my birthday is in October, and I like Halloween.
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Pluggers : have a black phone that’s a direct hotline to the Grim Reaper (much like the Gotham Caped Crusader has a red phone to the police commissionner). They dread the day that instead of the name of one of their friends or relatives, it’s their own they’ll hear.
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Safe Havens :
1. How would you have guessed that? Why would you suspect ANYONE of secretly being a shapeshifting catperson!?
2. How long ago did you guess that? How many of those moments where you were petting Palmtop, telling her about how much you like her owner, did you do so while knowing they were the same person?
MW: Olive remains cheerful after the MISHAP, but it’s obvious that she’s totally lost her sense of humerus.
Not even the most old-fashioned, pluggerish pluggers would still use a rotary phone. Unless for nostalgic decoration, it’s probably not even plugged in.
In turn, it ringing probably means that it’s haunted, bear-man had better be intimidated.
MW:
“Poor ‘Stanley’ was so unnerved by events, Olive, that he ended up needing a balloon angioplasty!”
MW:
“Okay, a little off-topic, Mary, but did you know that the model who posed for Edward Munch’s ‘The Scream’ series of paintings had just finished a balloon ride with ‘Stanley’ ?”
Blondie: The combination of text and visual in that last panel just makes me think they weren’t talking about emotional love per se, but cunnilingus. Well, some kind of ‘lingus’, anyhow…
MW: “You know I will, Mary! Any time you hear the cackling of crows and the baying of dogs, know that I am near…”
Pluggers: I like how Bearman is clutching his belly, as if it’s 911 calling him back to say ‘yeah, probably a perforated ulcer…’
BLONDIE: Blondie’s enduring bodacious body explained: she never gets any food. Ever.
PLUGGERS: I can remember the whole middle-of-the-night-bad -news thing. Do people still do that? Why?
LUANN: I can’t be the first to think this a “Drugs are bad, m’kay?” PSA.
DtM: Guess who has the ACLU on speed dial?
MW: Since “all creatures have telepathy,” it’s time for someone to start screaming, “Do NOT get on the plane with that girl! That one, right there!”
MW- That last line ” you know I will” is a veiled threat by Moy that if we don’t stop harping on Wilbur, she’ll bring Olive back.
Bear-Plugger, you are an amateur. When the phone rings at any time I always think it’s going to be bad news! Whether I answer it or not! I’m a walking ball of anxiety! By Plugger rules this makes me a good person, right?
Blondie: Poor Blondie won’t be feeling so romantic when that three-inch layer of fresh tomato slices ends up on Dagwood’s light-blue shirt, and she has to deal with the stain. (Not to mention the metaphorical stain of living with an incorrigible glutton.)
Mary Worth: You know, a “mishap,” like the Titanic or the Hindenburg. (You can’t call it a “disaster” unless your balloon literally exploded when it fell from the sky.)
Pluggers: This plugger should be scared — someone who sounds like his grandchild is in an emergency situation and needs to be wired lots of money immediately!
MW: The “Leave Room for Jesus” people are not going to bother Mary and Olive. Have Augie and Summer from RMMD been giving those two hugging lessons?
Pluggers ought to know their AT&T rotary phone has a ringer adjustment so they needn’t be bothered after 9pm. Or before.
RMMD: Summer’s polish-needing is getting a bit obvious.
FC: “…and filled with worms.”
@Maltmash3r: Moy really has us damned if we do, damned if we don’t, doesn’t she?
@MKay:
On Luann: Nah, it’s a ‘Look how foolish AI true believers are!’ PSA, done in the Evansii’s signature nonsensical, petty, catty, style.
Oh, and to the person who speculated whether Tiffany is naked in that bubble, you *know* that’s how Evans Sr. is picturing it, and now with Ann Effiel there too (with Steffi coming up to be revealed as ‘Queen Unpopular’ next week) he’s surely mashing their paper doll forms together and making kissy noises in his mind.
RMMD: Is anyone else starting to think this ‘novel’ doesn’t actually exist?
GT So this is what our so-brilliant-he’s-in-demand-by-the-pros coach comes up with, some kind of fakeout where’s-the-ball trick play. Funny, I didn’t think that was something you’d find at an NFL game, it feels one step removed from finding a loophole in the rulebook and bringing out a punt-kicker mule. Maybe pro football is more interesting than I thought!
RMMD The poor nurse tries to help Summer out of the conversational hole she’s digging herself into, but it’s not working: how’s your guy with a perfectly fine job? – you mean the soon-to-be-published author? – so he has a book deal! – noooo – well, you’ve read the draft, right? – ummm….
JP This is just sad. He’s presumably so drunk he can’t stumble to the door to say goodbye to his granddaughter. I guess Charlotte *is* better off even with Neddy, yikes.
HeartotCity We’ve ragged this already for (1) the unenforceable age policy that somehow everyone will know if a kid behind a mask is 11 or 12 and (2) all they need is signatures, not even signatures verified from the HOA neighbourhood. Having caught up and seen yesterday’s, I’ll add that it’s girl scout Fall Product season, they wouldn’t sell future cookies, they’d get you down for candies, nuts, and trail mix now!
Pluggers TL/DR:
Pluggers have rotary dial landline phones in 2025.
@The Quiet Man: RMMD Oh, it ‘exists’! He has a perfectly good view of his Great, Earth-Shattering Novel, but it’s in his *mind*, see, it’s not worth writing it out until he gets one of those short-sighted book publishers to *listen* to his pitch, acknowledge his brilliance, and sign a deal
MW – Let’s not forget the mean-girl rescue. There was time for that too!
@The Rambling Otter: Hey, we have a rotary phone! Granted, it’s not hooked up and it’s decorative and it’s red so we (I) can pretend it’s a batphone, but still.
RMMD – By chance, Summer stumbles across the manuscript (written by an English teacher).
“All work, and no play, makes Jack a dull boy.”
“All work, and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
“All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy.”
Augie was driven mad by whether he was dealing either with a list or a parenthetical. Summer spends her weekends pushing gruel into his catatonic mouth up at the sanitarium.
Blondie – “Honey, do you only have eyes for me?” “Yes, dear; if it weren’t for you, The Cartoonist would just leave the whole upper half of my face blank, because I’d have nothing worth looking at.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Where ya going, boss?”
“To a masquerade party”
“And who are you going as?”
“As myself!”
“But I’ve hired 52 models to go as my girlfriends!”
@Peanut Gallery: Shoulda waited 45 spots for this one.
The bone-in ham is one of my “favourite” comic strip tropes, but it took me a while to recognize that thing that looks like an oversized lint roller as a ham. Come on, Blondie artists, food porn is your thing, take some pride in it!
@Burford’s Car Beauty: So do I, but as decoration as well.
Pluggers’ pockets are perfectly in line with the pattern on their shirts.
@Peanut Gallery: Know what I love about your rendering? Unlike the original, it doesn’t confront me with the possibility that Don Abundio is younger than me!
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Um why? Sure he is always surrounded by beautiful women who purr over him, but really, at the end of the day, like any old dog he goes home and consoles himself with a 34.5.
Don’t worry, plugger, I guarantee it’s a robocall. Anyone you know who will be the ones sharing the bad news is right now furiously trying to text “Grandma’s in the hospital” to your rotary phone.
Mary Worth: Dear lord, was the “Olive is a Benevolent Psychic Teen” the MW team’s attempt at a Halloween story? All we get for spooky season is “I sure love dogs!” followed by a balloon crash?
I guess Mary and Olive turned into mannequins in the final panel, though. That’s kind of scary.
Balloon accidents…cause shortening of bilateral upper extremities…and awkward neck displacement. Got it. See, you can learn something from Mary Worth, suck it all you haters.
@21 Burford’s Car Beauty and @27 The Rambling Otter: Have some fun. Buy another phone and a ring down box. The phones can call each other, including ringing.
Pluggers: I call shenanigans! Pluggers are old, but they’re not that old, only the World Plugger War II veterans would sidle up to a rotary job like that with their backs against the wall. Stick to the jokes about Baby Plugger Boomers who can’t read the numbers on a cordless phone, Claire Hammerbeck of Denver Colorado!
Blondie: Has Dagwood been corrupted to the lifestyle of having sex with sandwiches by that one lady from Six Chix?
Mary Worth: Unbeknownst to Olive, she’s already been implanted with hypnotic commands as Mary’s manchurian candidate. As soon as she gets home, its only a matter of time before her parents say “endearing quirk” and are promptly killed by their own daughter.
@Baja Gaijin:
o_O
Also Mary Worth: Who did it better, June Brigman or Byzantine iconographers?
JP: Christ, what a sour puss. No wonder all the adults in her life are trying to get away from her.
Phantom: Oh man, I completely forgot about Patrolwoman Chang. Good knows what she’s been up to all these weeks we’ve been watching the fascinating saga of Ghost-Who-Punches-Flunkies. Mostly sleeping, I guess.
RMMD: ”Augie says the manuscript needs one more Polish first. He’s considering introducing Lieutenant Kuscmarski of the Silesian Guard during the big ballroom scene in chapter eight.”
@Victor Von: If this story turned into Evening Primrose I would take back everything bad I said about it.
Blondie: Sure, you have nothing to worry about…just so long as you keep the refrigerator well-stocked at all times. Otherwise you’ll find that when Dagwood says “I want to eat you out” he means it terrifyingly literally.
MW: “The ballooning mishap was the best part, because it made everyone see how wonderful and special I am! Why else do you think I psychically forced Stanley to fly into the middle of a storm?”
Dear God, if ever there was a time for Boeing to have one of their “quality control” lapses…
@TheDiva: GREAT story. I love me some John Collier.
Baldo: The Sedevactaists’ Guide to Roman Catholicism, Chapter 19: The Holy Sacrament of the Confession. “Nobody takes the Church seriously these days. People are eating cheeseburgers and root beer in the god damn booth. John XXIII was the last REAL Pope. Down with Vatican II!”
Lil’ Abner Redux: Is launching into the fucking “Chippendale Chair” plotline for the umpteenth time. But Yesterday’s reprint remains one of the greatest strips in the history of the funny papers.
@Ukulele Ike: In the Slylock-verse his counterpart is probably a dog named John Collie.
By which I mean, the dog was either a fan who wanted to continue his work. Or just wanted to outright steal his life.
But the big rule being “Must have a punny name” comes first.
Pluggers: Even worse news – getting a TELEGRAM! [silence] Am I the only person still alive who remembers what telegrams used to be? Not questionable social media posts on a sketchy platform? Even I am not old enough to have actually seen one delivered, but I’ve watched enough old movies.
Belated thanks to Scratchy for yesterday’s Scrotes, and apologies for accidentally taking up a 69 spot with a mundane factoid.
Notice how everyone in the airport terminal is deliberately walking away from Mary and Olive. They’ve got the right idea.
@richardf8: I think Don Abundio is 52 like Jack Benny is 39.
@richardf8: There’s a little story behind that.
DT: “Yes, Dr. Lakoyle has been forced into mass producing her zappy guns for state use. And just in time for the next round of ‘No Kings’ protests!”
Dustin: Ah, I see; the problem here is a lack of effective communication. You see, different people have different ways of expressing their absolute loathing and contempt for others, or “hate languages” as they are colloquially known. It seems that Dustin’s hate language is body shaming, whereas his father prefers to express his hatred through acts of thinly veiled resentment.
JP: Charlotte’s never going to see her grandparents again, is she?
MT: I see Tess has adopted the Rumi from K-Pop Demon Hunters hairstyle.
Luann: Oh great, one of these situations. Look, just ask one of them to answer a question that can be verified by simple observation. Or you know, punch one of them in the nose and see how they react.
Phantom: Sure, the Phantom regularly engages in vigilante violence, maintains his own branch of law enforcement, forces an entire indigenous tribe to guard his secret hideout filled with hoarded treasures (come on, dude, even the freaking British Museum lets other people look at the crap they stole from other countries), but he has never been a law unto himself!
RMMD: Yeah, he needs to find-and-replace “Summer” for “Julia” as the name of the sweet but hopelessly dim medical front office manager who is in love with the main character, dashing rogue CIA agent October Giles.
SH: “Honestly, why do you think I was so into this relationship? Now hurry up and get into the bedroom; I want to live out my catgirl fantasy before this wears off!”
@Ukulele Ike: I guess tvtropes would call this an Ironic Echo Cut, but I think it would be funnier to call it a Reverse Gilligan Cut.
@Ukulele Ike: I mostly know about it because it was turned into a TV musical back in the 60’s starring Anthony Perkins, with music by Stephen Sondheim. And really, if you’re going to turn a Twilight Zone-esque story about a secret colony of department store people that turns dissenters into mannequins into a musical, who else would you go with but Stephen Sondheim?
@Arabella: Even worse news – getting a TELEGRAM!
I have actually gotten a telegram! And I still think that text messages should be written in telegramese: SEND FLIGHT NUMBER SOONEST STOP WILL MEET AT IDLEWILD STOP.
MARY WORTH: Oh please, Josh! Olive’s going to show up at her doorstep and her parents are going to be all “why the Hell are you back already?” while tucking their shirts back into their pants and telling the 6 other people they invited (for…um…”coffee”) to hide in the linen closet for a bit.
@TheDiva: “So, Steve, the secret midnight department store people are like the Jets, and the mannequins are like the Sharks. And the night watchman is Officer Krupke. Got it?”
Anthony Perkins certain had an…interesting….career, when he wasn’t being Norman Bates. He was the protagonist in Green Mansions who falls in love with space alien Audrey Hepburn; he was another murderous psychopath in that flick with Tuesday Weld; he was Chaplain Tappman; he was the terrorist in charge of setting off a nuclear device in Charleston, South Carolina…
JP: I take it the judge is passed out in a puddle of his own bodily fluids.
Crank: Yesterday, Lillian questioned whether there even were any deer around. Today, she says she’s scared to leave the house due to the hordes of them tearing up the place at all times. Of course, it’s probably justifiable to violate continiuty like that if it’s in the service of a really good joke. Unfortunately, this is in the service of a Crankshaft joke.
@The Quiet Man: RMMD: Is anyone else starting to think this ‘novel’ doesn’t actually exist?
Count me in.
Zits: “Snot Waffle!” That’s a winner!
Blondie: This cartoon is dumb because nobody makes sandwiches that big.
Mary Worth: This cartoon is dumb because Mary and Olive don’t even notice Tall Wilbur in the background.
Pluggers: This cartoon is dumb because bears don’t have telephones.
REX MORGAN M.D.: “His script just needs one more layer of polish” (aka, he still hasn’t changed all the names of the Kitty Cop story he plagiarized from Sarah.)
@Arabella: A couple of years ago, I saw a newspaper article eulogizing a former Milwaukee radio announcer.
The article included a factoid that the radio station back in the 1950s would receive song requests via telegram, delivered to the radio station by the Western Union office downstairs.
RMMD:
It’s a dirty story of a dirty man,
and his clinging wife doesn’t understand.
His son is working for the Daily Mail.
It’s a steady job, but he wants to be a paperback writer.
Paperback writer!
Pluggers: I’ve never even seen a telegram in the flesh but I know they were expensive. Since they charged by the word did Western Union make you pay for the stops between the sentences or was that a given?
Back in 70s Western Union had this thing called a Mailgram. They’d wire the message the the nearest post office and it would be delivered in the next days mail.
Their slogan: The impact of a telegram but at the fraction of the cost!
Heads up, borderline political.
LUANN: Ann the Terrible isn’t unpopular, even Tiff’s dad likes her facade. Rather, she’s evil– destroying a few people openly but most by subterfuge.
Walking to the grocer I saw a neighbor walking her daughter. For the first time, neither acknowledged my greeting but kept their heads down so I couldn’t see their faces. ICE has covered my town in pretext of ” federal safety” so that even documented Latinas are terrorized. That too is evil.
@Ukulele Ike: Well, if my grandparents were those two day drinking, dysfunctional basket cases, I’d be pretty sour too.
@TheDiva: See above, why would she even want to? Then again, by agreeing to go with Neddy, the little raspberry-haired brat might be going from the frying pan into the fire.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: I vote for the Byzantine.
@52 2+2=7: Definitely! Olive knocks on her apartment door three times just like Sheldon Cooper and for the same reason. (not walking in on her parents in coitus)
@57 Lord Flatulence: “Snot waffle” is a Late Thread Cuisine recipe that I refuse to post.
MW: The sudden appearance of Wilbur in panel 1 is almost scary enough to distract from that Olive appears to have aged ten or so years. *looks at panel 2* oh god, she’s aged another ten years, what’s going on?! *sees Mary’s thumbs-up directed at nobody* I KNEW IT, BURN THE WITCH
Pluggers: I’m not too proud to admit that I took a moment to admire that well-drawn phone. The ominous shading is a nice touch.
(PS: I guess that’s more like Wilbur’s doppelgänger from the storyline with the crazy fish-eating yandere, I’m not good with names)
@62 Guillermo el Chiclero: In the mid-80’s, FedEx had a service in which FedEx picked up documents from the customer, brought them to their office, faxed the documents to the nearest FedEx depot to the recipient’s addresses, then delivered the printout via the regular FedEx courier. The services name was “Zapmail”. Really. Executives who were paid millions of dollars thought that idea up. FedEx shareholders definitely got maximum value for their corporate management buck.
Hah! I’m in 69 and I’m pissing on it. Heh heh.
MW: Shoutout to the background lady in the lava lamp coat for giving her fellow airline customers a much quicker psychedelic trip than the whole “special child save the day through canine telepathy” thing we just sat through.
Pluggers: Pluggers spend a lot of time standing next to their rotary dial phone with a sense of sinking dread.
It could be no other way. If he were passed out in a puddle of someone else’s bodily fluids, that might be interesting.
When the phone rings between 9 AM and 5 PM, Pluggers know it’s a collection agency. If it rings after 9 PM, someone is dead. Between 5 and 9 PM though it might be that nice young man from Microsoft who just needs a bit more money to fix the computer.
C-Shaft: The only deer I see here is Lillian, and she’s in the headlights.
DT: Hey, Cotton Mather only took the governor’s job to guard the colony against smallpox and ensure the Sabbath was being kept. The zappy guns are way out of his wheelhouse.
Dustin: Also shirts/skins is a shorthand way to distinguish between teams, by definition unnecessary for a one-on-one game. Dustdad is singlehandedly dragging down the average intelligence of the legal profession.
FC: Sam didn’t chew up the paper, but that’s the last time he gives that job to a new intern. (The intern is Jeffy, but you knew that.)
JP: Alan Parker is filled with a brown, 80-proof sadness, as he so often is.
Luann: Unclear why Anne Eiffel is popping up in Luann and Bernice’s lame molly trip. Any particular reason she’d be on their minds?
Phantom: Apparently Jungle Patrollers sleep with their pistols in their hands while out on assignment, which must lead to all sorts of hilarity.
RMMD: Every letter in “Not officially just yet” after the “o” in “not” is gratuitous. But you bet that Augie is busy polishing it, and no I don’t mean his novel.
@Baja Gaijin: We all have our standards and limits.
Blondie – Has Tuesday Chick from Six Chix been DMing Dagwood with sandwich-based temptations to stray from his monogamous marriage?
Mary Worth – The entire flight crew is going to retire after the Odyssey that will be trying to fly back to New York with Olive as a passenger.
Pluggers – If Pluggers were to reject technology and go back to simpler ways, it would look more like the squalor of Snuffy Smith and Hootin’ Holler than the hard-working Amish with their well made homes and furniture, and plain, but well maintained appearance.
@Artist formerly known as Ben:
On Luann, and why Bernice and Luann are dreaming (or IS it a dream?) of Ann Eiffel : Queen Unpopular, Queen Popular’s evil counterpart who isn’t really all that different from her* was probably initially going to be Steffi, then the Evansii wondered “Wait… Have Luann and Bernice even MET Steffi? Would they actually know who she is?”
(I’m thinking that the closest they got was when Tiffany invited them to the pool party, where they didn’t get to meet Kip because he ran back into the shed when they came to join him in the pool, meaning the closest they got to meeting Steffi is… not even getting to meet her boyfriend, having to take Tiffany’s word for it that HE even exists…)
*That’s the intention, right?
Even though it’s wrong, Ann is more of an actual villain than Tiffany ever wasZits: Is a “Snot Waffle” anything like a “Stroopwafel?”
@Ken: Like the Spinal Tap drummer who died choking on vomit. “Only….it wasn’t his vomit.”
A 1950s movie producer was wary of miscasting the lead role in his new film, so sent a telegram to a big Hollywood agent: “How old Cary Grant?” Unfortunately, Grant was in his agent’s office at the time and immediately wired back “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?”
MW: Ha ha, did you notice Wilbur lurking around at the same departure gate?
@Burford’s Car Beauty:
I was going to assume it was direct-connected to the Kremlin. Forget that skirmish in East Berlin, and head off that first strike!
Newspaper comics guys are basically a generation beyond me. While I know many from that tribe in the real world, and many are into golf, I would’ve thought few were romantic with their sandwiches. Golf seems okay, now I look at my roast beef on white. Am…am I missing SOMETHING?
And, for Hi and Lois: Hi, respect you dressing up like a farmer from 1930 to rake some fucking leaves. Lois is off “selling a house,” and cheating on you, SO much.
“By the way,Mary,that baldy over there is the brother of the psycho who has been terrorizing Wilber and Dawn.”
@Ukulele Ike:
Love the reference, but Lech Walesa is welcome!
@A Grave Mind: Am…am I missing SOMETHING?
_____________________________
Hold the mayo.
Just the most inane Mary Worth storyline. We all hate Wilbur, but at least we know the strip is using that hatred as engagement bait, here it’s, what, psychicsploitation? Whatever it is I hate it.
Late Thread Cuisine: Waffles!