0. It was one of the most reliable bits. The readers might reasonably have believed that the joke was that she would never die.
When they opened the paper on July 10, they found out what the real joke was.
That day’s Momma, a Sunday, was a single panel, a cemetery scene, with a big tombstone in the center. The top of the tombstone read:
Sponsored
R.I.P.
SONYA HOBBS
1927-2016
Below that was the punchline Lazarus had come up with decades earlier:
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I TOLD
YOU I
WAS SICK
The gag itself was sent from the grave. Mell Lazarus had died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on May 24, at the age of 8