Comics Kingdom | Dustin by Steve Kelley and Jeff Parker

Steve Kelley and Jeff Parker

About

Each day, Dustin invites readers into the lives of the Kudlick family, who have welcomed the strips' 23-year-old namesake back into the house after college for "just a little while."

Mind you, the Kudlicks are not a dysfunctional family - rather they are highly functioning with mother (Helen), father (Ed) and daughter (Megan) suddenly living again with devoutly dysfunctional Dustin, who at 23 is unemployed, unmotivated and unable to see any of that as a problem.

An inveterate dreamer, Dustin refuses the prescribed route to success - working his way up. Instead, he insists he will patent an invention...join the PGA Tour...or take his comedy act to television. Until then, he works temporary jobs for a day or two - sometimes a week - and then quits or is fired and the process begins anew. One day, he's a meter maid, taking down soccer mom SUVs. The next day, he is a private detective investigating a cheating spouse: "I have to follow some lady around the golf course…her husband thinks she's moving her ball."

Though Dustin is the star, the strip is what creators Steve Kelley and Jeff Parker call a "sitcomic" that often explores relationships of cast members, even in Dustin's absence. Kelley notes, "Between Dustinrsquos temp jobs, Helen's radio show and Ed's law practice, the strip has plenty of fresh air pouring in. The only thing about Dustin that's predictable is that it's different every day."

Dustin was named "Newspaper Comic Strip of the Year" by the National Cartoonists Society for 2010.

Characters

Dustin Kudlick

At 23, Dustin Kudlick is a recent college graduate who majored in English because he already spoke the language. Unencumbered with ambition, Dustin’s goal is to find a career that yields the greatest pay for the least amount of effort.

Ed Kudlick

As a successful general practice lawyer, the family patriarch sets a high bar. His second job is encouraging Dustin to move onward and upward — but he’d settle for out.

Helen Kudlick

Sunny and self-assured, Helen is Dustin’s enabler, forever defending him to his father. An unapologetic shopper, Helen hosts a successful call-in radio show.

Megan Kudlick

Studious and disciplined, Meg is everything her older brother isn’t.

Simone Fontenot

The salty owner of TurboTemps, a one-Cajun-woman employment agency, Simone provides Dustin with temporary job assignments and unending criticism.

Fitch

Dustin’s best friend, Fitch is an affable jock who can’t understand why, on a trip to Hawaii, he saw so few out-of-state license plates.

Authors

Steve Kelley

The creative team behind Dustin combines the talents of established political cartoonists Steve Kelley, who writes the strip, and Jeff Parker, who draws it.

Kelley has extensive experience producing humor. In 1985, he began writing comedy and performing at open-mike nights in San Diego. His incisive wit and dry delivery quickly propelled him to showrooms and television. Kelley performed at Harrah’s, The Desert Inn, and The Riviera in Las Vegas and Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. He opened for the late Peter Allen at Carnegie Hall and made seven appearances on The Tonight Show.

Kelley’s political cartoons are widely syndicated in newspapers nationwide and have won many of his profession's top awards, including The National Headliner Award and the Scripps-Howard Foundation's National Journalism Award. In 2008 he served as a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College with Roz Chast and commentator Juan Williams.

The Virginia native and Dartmouth graduate is father to a 16-year-old son, Hayden, about whom he brags without regard to the listener’s interest.

Jeff Parker

Jeff Parker began drawing editorial cartoons for Florida Environments newsmagazine in 1989. He moved to the Orlando Business Journal in 1990 before joining his hometown newspaper, Florida Today, in 1992. He retired from editorial cartooning in 2013. Throughout his 21 years with Florida Today, Jeff’s work was distributed to hundreds of newspapers in the United States and abroad, appearing in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, TIME, Newsweek, Le Monde, and Courrier International, and broadcast on CNN and Fox News.

Parker’s editorial work received awards from Gannett News Service, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, the Florida Press Club and the Florida Press Association. In 2005, Jeff won the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Division Award for Editorial Cartooning after three prior nominations.

In addition to drawing Dustin, Parker assists Mike Peters with his comic strip, “Mother Goose & Grimm.” Parker works from his home studio. His wife, Pat, considers him her only child.

Barney Google And Snuffy Smith