Folks! Your COTW in a moment, but first: when I asked “who is Mel Gordon to Gil?” in my Thursday wrapup, I was failing my job as a Gil Thorp History Knower! I should always assume that when someone Gil knows shows up in the strip, they’re from a storyline from the past – in this case, a storyline from 2002, as outlined in by the folks at This Week In Milford, who are truly doing the work. This was before I was reading the strip, which is my excuse, but it’s actually one of the more famous storylines in the strip’s history! This was towards the end of the writing run of Jerry Jenkins – yes, the guy who wrote the Left Behind novels, who preceded the recently retired Neal Rubin – and was controversial because, among other reasons, it featured Gil convincing Melissa to not have the abortion she wanted. Later the pregnant teen girl tried and failed to seduce Gil, which, uhhhhh, and then we never heard from her again.

Anyway! This seemed to add up to new writer Henry Barajas retconning things by flipping the script on Gil’s teen abortion opinion, but as faithful reader/This Week In Milford co-curator Ned Ryerson revealed in a comment on this blog, Barajas wrote Gil saying “Mel, I shouldn’t have told you not to get an abortion” and something went screwy during the publishing process! Oops! It will be interesting to see how this gets resolved, or whether the cleansing bonfire will make us forget all about it.

OK! With that business out of the way, here is your comment … of the week!

"It only takes one look at this furniture salesman, with his sporty purple shirt and green tie bought together in a plastic box set in the young men's section at Kohl's, to realize he doesn't get paid enough for this shit. Not to participate in family drama, not to sell sad, outdated furniture (also purple), and frankly, not enough even to appear in this strip. Say what you will about the 'millennial' Dustin, but weep for Gen Z, who only wanted to get Invisalign and get on with their lives." --pastordan