BOWLING FEATURED IN ‘BLONDIE’ AND ‘ZITS’ STRIPS

Bowling received the best kind of advertising — i.e., free — on Aug. 26, courtesy of Dean Young and John Marshall, the writer and illustrator of the comic strip “Blondie,” and Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, the cartoonist and illustrator of the comic strip “Zits.”

The “Blondie” strip saw Dagwood Bumstead and his best friend Herb Woodley convinced by their wives to throw away their old, dented bowling balls with bribes of pot roast and chicken fricassee, respectively.

In “Zits,” teenager Jeremy Duncan can’t find a house ball that fits him, settling for a kids’ ball decorated with daisies. That prompts his friend, Hector Garcia, to take out his phone and search, “How to gain weight in your fingers.”

The “Blondie” strip appears in more than 2,000 newspapers, while “Zits” appears in 1,700 papers.