It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Ace of Spades.
As we watch Muir's characters express their fury about having any obligations to anybody and their indignation that there are law enforcement bodies that don't just shoot brown people and leftist scum, a reminder that just two years ago, this place was insisting it was a separatist republic under the rule of this family.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Wolves of the North.
The fascinating thing about Muir's "uniparty" bullshit is that you get scenarios like this. When the people he supports do something that annoys him, he just rewrites reality so it isn't actually his side doing things--things that he supported in their initial phases, mind you--no, no it's that evil conspiracy that runs thing in the shadows doing it. Muir may be a fascist, but he's largely ruled by the impulses that created the Italian Regency of Carnaro, the unrecognized interwar microstate where the militias that had taken over wound up doing things like having mock battles with live grenades, because, hey why not, they're full of vital energy after all. He loves oppression in the abstract and when he thinks it's happening to his enemies, but eventually, he runs headlong into the fact that his dreamed of dictatorship is going to have build a general state capacity for oppression that could be used against him. And whenever that happens, he grows irate, because he is fundamentally a child demanding his vague and contradictory wishes be granted instantaneously and with no negative consequences for himself.
These moments are always true 'stopped clock' scenarios, Muir reaching the right conclusion for once, but based on premises that are completely self-indulgent and hypocritical. And now that I've said all that, let's enjoy Day 2 of Muir on the war path against the Administration, even if he's clearly loading his attitude with qualifiers.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Riddle Rider.
And apparently, Muir finally reached the limit of being able to ignore rising gas prices and beef prices, and is throwing a snit.
Of course, as usual, he still demonstrates a profound ignorance of economic realities even when he bows to the world that actually is--Muir seems to think that importing Argentinian beef would raise the price here instead of lowering it.
Because he's a dull nativist who assumes that international trade has to be a bad thing.
As we start the second era of Day by Day, we hit an interesting phenomena... the Transition Era is, at first glance, a tough one to define, something that is most easily delineated by absence. Oh, we can track its dates easy, 2008 until late August 2014, but that's just because of how clearly defined the two eras it's between are. You can tell what the Mystery Business(tm) Era is. It has its nominal office setting as a common thread, even if it was clumsily handled, and clearly something Muir was moving on from by the end. It is easy to see where it starts--the cast after all, more or less introduces itself as a bunch of employees in the opening strips--and where it ends--the incredibly swift off-panel bankruptcy and shuttering of the business, and the cast's fairly nonchalant response to it over the next week.
Likewise, the beginning of the Compound Era that is to follow is easy to spot--Zed and Sam reach his father Wade's ranch, and boom, we have the strip's new basic setting for the foreseeable future. If spotting where it ends is tough, it's only because of just how successful it was at becoming the strip's new baseline, with the Gunpowder County Era being more a natural building upon its predecessor, instead of a radical change. You are in the Compound Era because Zed and Sam are now living on a freaking armed compound. It's genuinely self-demonstrating, not tautological.
Stuck between these two clearly defined eras, the Transition Era can't help but seem like a muddle at first glance, something defined simply by not being either of them. And this impression can only grow greater due to the fact that the Transition Era IS a muddle, a series of ungainly plotlines, incidents and settings all inexpertly welded together in ways that usually do not make sense. Storylines stumble over each other. Elements are introduced, undone, and then reintroduced. It is six years and a period of months of Muir trying to figure out what he wants to do with the strip, constantly changing his mind, becoming fixed on ideas, then abandoning them, either slowly or all at once.
But that's the thing. That muddled effort to find out... that winds up producing a unified story, even if it's on a meta-level. Because the story of the Transition Era is Muir realizing that Sam and Zed are THE central characters of the strip and gradually producing an ideal setting (or what he imagines is an ideal setting) for the new versions of them to play around in. It is not a pretty process. It is a work of fits and starts, and it goes down many strange directions. Further, the end result isn't a success by any decent artistic standard. In fact, it's a grotesque failure. But where it winds up scratches Muir's itch, and we know that, because the strip that comes out the other end is the one that he's pretty much been writing for the past decade.
And that is so important, because it is what has made this strip something fascinating, something one can follow. If Muir was pure partisan hack tossing out dull Right-wing talking points dully, this strip would be the equivalent of Mallard Fillmore, and I would have probably stopped blogging it, as, well, Duck and Cover, the blog that inspired me to start this one eventually did with the actual Mallard Fillmore. But instead, it is the idiosyncratic work we're looking at, and well, this era is going to be the one where we watch it become that. So sit back, and prepare for surprises, including quite a few times where you'll go, "Wait, he was already doing that?".
It's going to be one hella bumpy ride. I mean that. Once we slide past the very early parts of the opening period where Muir was clearly imagining that yeah, he was going to be back in the funny pages any day NOW, it gets weird. Then it gets weirder. Then it gets bugfuck insane. Also, this is the Era where the fanservice shifts by degrees and fits and starts to softcore. And in many ways, that's the quiet ick of this time period, compared to the loud ick of Muir regularly going to Bad Places. Like I said--hella bumpy.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Iron Man.
You know, there's just one fascinating bit to that disgusting, pathetic childish bit of idiocy, Muir's most grotesque visit yet to the 'Pork is Muslim kryptonite' well. This is the first strip in the sequence not to be a completely muddled mess. It's repulsive, yes, but it has a beginning, a middle and an end that build off each other. Comic-Trump and Comic-Mamdani may bear only the slightest of resemblance to the actual individuals they're based on, but at least they don't seem to be changing course mid-talk.
Of course, the problem is it is part of that sequence, which turns it into yet another bizarre swerve, as not only does this confirm that yes, Mamdani was in there, and thus, did hear all that, but Trump once again pivots wildly from his attitude in the previous strip.
But hey, he made that dirty paynim smell his fart, so yay, I guess.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Fighting Ranger.
...
The most amusing part is that Muir thinks this comes off as such a big win, but Mamdani has been listening to Trump spew anti-Muslim bullshit this entire time like a deranged racist grandpa at Thanksgiving. Or he would have if there was any actual continuity in this entire sequence of strips, but again, Trump and Schumer are having problems staying consistent in their personalities and goals throughout. And I don't mean between strips. I don't even mean between panels. I mean between lines.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Fast Express.
You know, moving past the vicious, incoherent anti-Muslim rhetoric, and you have a classic bit for DbD, where Muir is trying to write the fictional versions of politicians in his head as if they were real, except he has multiple versions of them and he can't keep them straight. And so not only do Today-Trump and Today-Schumer contradict how they were acting yesterday, they even change behaviors mid-conversation in this strip.
