(Original Publication Date, 27 February 1991)
Panel 1: We find ourselves watching Mike sitting in his room pouting because his parents dug their heels in on the 'giving him his own phone' thing. Other kids have their own phone so why can't he?
The short answer is that he has a mother who thinks he has more than enough stuff anyway and always did.
Panel 2: He rails against the unfairness of it all because he can't have the following things that Elly conflates with ushering in the apocalypse: a personal phone line, a donorcycle and a drown-in-a-frozen-lake mobile.
The first one is, of course, the most dangerous because it would defuse tension in a way that treats a child as a person and not an antagonist.
Panel 3: We zoom out to see a room loaded with all the crap they buy him so he can make what Lynn thinks is hypocritical and ignorant whining about how his parents won't let him have anything.
Not only does Mike have a computer, enough ski equipment for five people, a Garfield stick-up and clothes, clothes, clothes, he even has a grinning rubber homonculus he'll call Ned Tanner......but since he's a human being, the only things he sees are the things he ain't got.
Summary: Mike looks like one of the rich idiots who claim not to be rich because (surprise, surprise) they still have to worry about how much something costs. Ah, well. Tomorrow,
howtheduck talks about Gordon's confused thinking when Lynn banks on people not actually keeping track of who everyone knows. 
