It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Mike or Alec or Rufus.
So there are three major things to unpack in this--first of course, is Muir's always self-righteous version of God-bothering, where bigotry and awfulness are part of what mark you as the chosen and where you are being so persecuted, man, for this, which shows you're a For Real And True Christian.
The second is how this is a good example of the Romans' weird status in Muir's Right Wing Pop History mind. They're to be respected, some of the time, because Western Civilization, but only some of the time, because the Decadence, and also, Bad to Christians. In essence, they don't get the love the Spartans get, because Muir doesn't see them doing That One Cool Thing.
The third, of course, is that Muir's still trying to make Teeter a thing.
I will add the two details which jumped out at me:
ReplyDeleteOne, he's not president anymore and hasn't been for years. How pathetic is this. I think it connects to the thing you've been talking about, where the Trump presidency is not satisfying for Muir, because now we're the ones in charge, and we always must be propping up these all-powerful enemies to fight against! Any moment now, Hillary will pop back into the strip...
And two, let's not gloss over just how awful Mari's face is in that second panel. She's supposed to be the thoughtful one with the deep eyes, but he managed to make her into a Frankenstein creature with a unibrow. I will never cease to wonder at the Peanut Gallery members who think Muir has "amazing artistry."
Won't lie, it took a second viewing for me to notice it was Obama, partially because, as you note, it's such a bizarre and irrelevant choice, Muir desperately trying to juice himself up by imagining the old enemies, but also because it was such shit and strange drawing of him.
Delete@Eurobrat
DeleteMe either! These clowns are constantly praising his artistry (I’ll never forget the one comment that called his current stuff, as opposed to the early strips, a “master class”. Ironically the older, simpler stuff was a lot more relatively pleasing, as he was essentially staying in his lane) even as he gets more and more incompetent at both character and composition. How they — and our host — are always able to decipher these strips without having to read some of them three or four times just to figure out who’s saying what, I’ll never know.
I tend to imagine that some of it's familiarity--remember, I've reviewed nearly every cartoon Muir's done for the strip, with only some alternate Sundays that are now lost to the digital ether not being present. The other part is they're plugged into this brand of crazy, which is why they will respond with nods with stuff that leaves me baffled.
DeleteOf course, the third part is the Emperor's New Clothes effect--they've all convinced themselves that this slop is genius.