It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Radio Detective.
...
I have said it on multiple occasions--Muir has never been that good about having the cast interact with each other, but over the last decade it's gotten downright off-putting, especially the moments like that when he's clearly aiming for warm and happy.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Officer 444.
And the awful joke about the woman who murdered her kids is a relief because it puts an end to the antisemitism.
For now.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Winking Idol.
...
It's like he's trying to underline my frickin' point. Muir doesn't actually feel anything about the plight of Palestinians. He despises them the same as he always has. It's just that now he can look at the Israeli Right's rhetoric on them and recognize its obvious hatefulness--because he's a nasty antisemite now, so he's always looking for excuses to despise Jews.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Strings of Steel.
Once again, Muir demonstrating that this reconsideration of Israel doesn't come from a place of deep moral revaluation, it comes from him buying narratives that both confirm existing biases and frame this as another slight against whites. Because, once again, he's gotten really, really Nazi these days.
When I first set forth the idea of eras being divided up into periods, I noted that the Mystery Business(tm) Era's division was very simple and that future eras were likely going to be more involved. And well, not only was I right, but the very next era would prove to be the most Byzantine of the lot. As I noted in the last installment, the Transition Era was one of constant clumsy experimentation, and that wound up giving it the most periods of any era--eight periods, over a six year, eight-month span. Further, there is no uniformity here--some will last for years, others can be measured in weeks. A lot of this is because of the period's lack of narrative sinews--what might come across as a storyline in one of the more defined eras winds up being the closest thing to something holding a large sequence of strips together as a unit.
And so, to give you all an idea of what's ahead, I will list off those periods, with a brief explanation of what each entails. My classification of these periods is largely going to focus on what Zed's doing, both because he's rapidly becoming the principal protagonist and because it provides a handy measuring stick. Trust me, by the later portions of the era, Damon and Jan are already in sharp decline as relevant characters.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Fighting with Buffalo Bill.
Once again, any relief one might feel to see Muir finally acknowledging the immoral nature of much of Israel's policy, or their flaws as an ally is completely offset by the vicious antisemitism that fuels it and the nasty conspiracy-laden way that it is put. Hell, this one even tries to make it look like the US is the primary victim of Israel's foreign and Palestinian policy, and... no.
The only relief here is that Muir is clearly writing from a somewhat checked-out place, ignoring a domestic scene that is not looking good for his politics.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Scarlet Streak.
There's something especially grim in that the only reason Muir can finally see this as vicious is that his antisemitism has reached Third Reich levels himself. In the old days, he was nodding along with shit like that, and muttering "Ahh, but we must support Israel..."
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Perils of the Wild.
...
I see Muir is already picking his scapegoat in the Administration, and gosh, it's the Jewish son-in-law. It's astonishing how much of an out-and-out Nazi he's become, while imagining himself to be something that isn't.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Great Circus Mystery.
As usual in these cases, several days of feeling angry at the Administration have shifted to Muir finding a way to transfer his anger to his imaginary cabal of leftists. Because otherwise, Muir might have to admit he was wrong about something.
But hey, he's back to trying to make Teeter happen.
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.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Steel Trail.
And here is Muir at his most pathetic, ignoring the blatant efforts to subvert the Constitution the man he's presently following, shrieking that reforms to correct institutions that he and his have thoroughly corrupted and turned into threats are betraying the government and writing a sad little cartoon where the target subjected to this imbecilic harangue just quivers and gives up, for who can resist this transcendent truth?
Again, simply pathetic.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Social Buccaneer.
He treats this as such a stirring lesson and statement of values, instead of yet another display of his crudity, his racism, and of course, his tendency to try and use static panels as an artistic crutch.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Phantom Fortune.
The fascinating thing is that Muir is doing this to make us care about this couple.
And he has succeeded. In that I now want something horrible to happen to them so they don't breed. They are that fucking awful.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Oregon Trail.
The endless cries about the sad victimization of white men are hitting new levels of pathetic.
Also Mari's become the latest Owens girl to sprout the throat-arm. Yay.
It's safe to say that the Mystery Business(tm) Era has a strange relation to the later eras of the strip. It's the debut, after all, which introduced the core cast--or at least the original core cast of four. But, except for Damon, that cast barely resembles those early versions of themselves, a bunch of strange substitutes who bear the same name but little more. The simple shallow cores of the characters may remain, but everything around them is completely transformed. Sam is (again, after the unaltered Damon) the closest to her original character, but even that is often a rough similarity. Modern Sam is a vicious unpleasant bitch--to an extent that puts her original self to shame--who goes on about engineering every now and then to establish her as smart and logical, and just ignore your lying eyes. But the modern Sam is a proud redneck, a country girl who don't like them cityfolk, in essence a far cry from the urban professional of the Mystery Business(tm) Era. Her age has been quietly lowered over the years (most of the time), a process that started quite prominently at the very end of the era, but has subtly continued since. It's hard to think she and her now husband used to spend strips complaining about how they were a couple of aging forty year-olds who felt increasingly out of place in the modern world, but then as I've noted before, characters in DbD don't develop, they change. Sam now seems to be a nearly ageless vixen, even if she's now a grandmother. Who recently gave Zed yet another child herself.
Zed is an even more extreme change, an entirely new character sitting in the old's remodeled skin. The process of becoming Captain Mitty that began in the later years of the Mystery Business(tm) Era and accelerated in the Transition Era (something we'll be examining heavily in the upcoming segments) has run its course and turned him into a scowling attempt at an action hero. Zed's original schlub status and human touches are gone, replaced by a grim idol of toxic masculinity. And Zed is fortunate compared to Jan, who is now a hollow space where a character was, nodding along with her husband against the values she was created to embody. What little importance she has in the strip comes from the deus ex machinas that are her father and her son, supplying the Compound with infinite Plot Coupons through limitless wealth and infinite magitek respectively.
For that matter, while Damon's character remains the same, the one member of the cast who is still who he was to begin with, well... as I said in the first entry about him... he doesn't show up much anymore. He might still be the same guy but the strip doesn't need that guy anymore. And Muir seems to realize this on some level--every effort to bring him back ends with Damon shuffling off after a few weeks, Jan in tow. It seems that nostalgia is what keeps them around these days, in so much that they're even around.
And that nostalgia is key to understanding the bizarre relationship that the Mystery Business(tm) Era has with the strip's later days. Muir clearly has a sentimental attachment to the early days of the strip, beyond some simple wish to keep some level of continuity. But he can never indulge too much in that sentiment, because the strip that now exists just doesn't match the early one. The DbD that is now is an elaborate, rickety structure built over a ditch, and focusing on the foundations could send the entire structure toppling down below. There's clearly a part of Muir that wants to just abandon it all and move on to a new work--witness the occasional side projects. And yet, both fears of losing his audience and his own attachment to what he's made keeps him still writing the old strip--again, witness the occasional side projects being presented as fictional works created by Sam, featuring protagonists that are supposed to be self-inserts of her. He just can't move on. Aside from his business model, something in him won't let him. And so we get the occasional strange wistful comment on the past, one that ignores most of what actually happened at the time.
This can go in odd places. I've referred to the fate of poor Suzi the Intern on multiple occasions, and now is a good time to detail it. Over a decade after her aborted storyline ended abruptly without even really starting, and she unceremoniously exited the strip, Sam brought her up to her husband during a discussion of the "Me Too" movement. This was a standard misogynistic denial of its legitimacy, during which Sam chuckled that Zed was lucky that "Suzi from a few years ago" didn't make a (spurious) report on him. Now, you may think that depicting the movement as nothing more than hysterical women reporting on men that they'd been obsessed with would be the low point of this. But, no it got worse. Zed wound up giving Suzi what she'd never had in her actual appearances, a last name. Indeed, "Suzi Strom" got a sudden nationality change--she was apparently Swedish, something that had never been indicated at the time. No, Zed stated, Suzi wouldn't be saying anything. She had gone back to Sweden years ago, where he stated she had been "raped to death" by her Muslim boyfriend. He then followed this up with a cruel quip.
Yes, that was how Muir had her die, in a cruel manner that regurgitated racist talking points about Europe, Muslims and interracial dating, and misogynistic talking points about women reporting rape, as well as liberal women daring to not do what reactionary white guys demand they do. Made into an object lesson that insisted not only were left and center-left women bad, but they deserve to have bad things happen to them. That's what the Mystery Business(tm) Era has been for the past decade or so. Something to occasionally mine for counterfeit continuity, fraudulent sentiment and cheap shock.
And so this era stands, both the starting point, and yet a near complete contradiction of what would follow, save, of course, for its politics. But of course, there's a lot more strip ahead, and in the next era, we're going to see that rickety structure get built. Prepare for wackiness.
But not fun wackiness. Oh no.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because In the Days of Daniel Boone.
...
...
...
The most pathetic thing about this vile bullshit is it's clear Muir doesn't actually know what the Frankfurt School is, he just imagines he does.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Ghost City.
Muir's ability to pivot on AI in a way that's both witless AND cruel remains a sight to behold. The unlikely, imagined image of scientists losing their livelihoods to the machines makes him chuckle, for they are infected by the woke and have people who are not white guys doing things. But when he remembers the things are scanning his work, he gets so offended.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Eagle's Talons.
We've literally listen to this man babble pseudoscience, toss out a popular but in fact spurious quote that is, on closer look, little more than vague hatred, and now he spouts the cheap and pathetic lies of "Affirmative Action/DEI ate muh lunch!"
So, yeah, classic Hivemind member, all swollen ego and dismal intelligence.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Beasts of Paradise.
I know I keep saying this, but I find Muir's efforts to dress up his awfulness with the pretensions of high culture and historical knowledge so tedious. Because in the end, his knowledge is just like the philosophy he's using them to try to support--shallow and false.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Around the World in Eighteen Days.
...
I have said it before, and I will say it again--there is no true loyalty in the movement. There was none when it was worshiping Dubya, there was none when it was worshiping any number of Tea Party figures, and there is none when it is worshiping Trump. The idol exists to be exalted, yes, but also to exalt the cult by proxy. When they begin to doubt, they flirt with tearing it down. Muir has had these flirtations before. He's always turned back because Trump has always provided some cruelty, some pretext and some promise of Muir's vaguely imagined racist tomorrow. But the day's fast approaching when Il Puce will simply be an old, done man.
And as that happens, the flirtation will likely move to a true dismissal, and Muir will find a new one.
And it will be worse. That's another thing I'm sure of.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because With Stanley in Africa.
...
Once you move past the typical Muir whining, it's pretty clear he just wants to draw dinosaurs again. There's just so little happening in this strip right now.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Radio King.
...
He is so checked out right now. Just look at this. There is nothing to really talk about because this strip is just... nothing.
Muir's long time tradition of what I like to call shoutouts to his internet homies began from the very start of the strip. Of course, where he now does things like drawing avatars of paying fans visiting the cast, back then, he was generally referring to (or in a few rare cases drawing) online Right-wing bloggers, many of them being supporters of his strip. Muir loved this group, valorizing them as 'citizen-journalists' who told it like it was, and struck back at a subversive, incompetent mainstream media that Muir was convinced was biased against the Right. He repeated their triumphs, their stories and their talking points, sometimes word for word, and when something turned against them, well, he looked away.
As was so often the case, Muir was being taken for a ride. On some level, he allowed this to happen--most people are susceptible to being told what they want to hear, and Muir was especially prone, as he demonstrated during this time on numerous subjects and would go on to demonstrate to even greater amounts. Many of his 'citizen-journalists' were astroturfed young Republican party hacks, enjoying the patronage of various Right-wing organisations in the latest wrinkle of an infotainment ecosystem that had developed during the Clinton years. Not all of them, mind you, but enough of them. These were not the, for the most part, humble average citizens doing journalism in their spare time, but actual journalists doing subsidized partisan journalism while insisting they were humble and average.
Of course, the occasional independent figure did enjoy having their signal boosted by the more connected ones. Muir offers a good example of just how this ecosystem could work--a third-rate (and I might be being kind in my ranking there) webcomic artist getting a shot at syndication that he frankly did not deserve, because his comic caught the eye of a bunch of what amounted to low-ranking party functionaries. DbD was even featured and linked on the RNC webpage for a while. Looking at Muir's shoutouts at this stage, it's clear he has a rather sentimental attachment to this world, the exact sort of thing that is meant by 'parasocial bonds'. Muir was imagining a deep spiritual connection with people who were at best friendly acquaintances, at worst, people who viewed him as a cynical means to an end.
As usual with the Mystery Business(tm) Era, this is both a snapshot of an earlier time, and a foreshadowing of what would come. By the end of the Bush years, the Right blogosphere was largely consolidating to a handful of large, carefully curated sites with well-heeled backers. Many of the techniques used to kickstart it would get used again to create the Tea Party movement, and Muir (as we will see in future installments) lapped that one right up too. But in both cases, he wound up a good example of a problem the GOP and the Right weren't counting on, that constantly radicalizing your followers and telling to listen to extremist outsiders doesn't have a clear endpoint, and they will, eventually, wind up listening to actual extremist outsiders instead of the people you've chosen to play the part. When Muir talks about 'citizen journalists' these days, it's usually a crazy person screaming about conspiracy theories that don't help the GOP that much.
But that's the future, something we'll be considering in the next installment.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Perils of the Yukon.
So now we're combing the 'overly-protective dad' jokes with the robots.
...
This comic is so in the weeds right now.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because In the Days of Buffalo Bill.
As we witness Muir's utter intellectual pliability once again, I just have to note that Mari is apparently standing nearly stock-still for the last two strips.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
It's been kind of fascinating, over the years, watching Muir shift from the classic Rand fan who was personally skeptical of religion to the bizarre hybrid area he exists in now, where he's absolutely still excited about dinosaurs, but also has come to accept that obviously, Goddidit.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Winners of the West.
Muir is tossing this out, a distorted version of the old PC bugaboos, because he heard for years that Trumpism and the MAGAts would lead to failure and humiliation.
And it has, so he's retreating to the sandbox where he can pretend games like this come across as tough, instead of peevish and pathetic.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The White Horseman.
As we stare at this muddled, meaningless attempt at profundity, I'd say it's amazing that Muir wants to go there on the Epstein files, but let's be honest, he's clearly retreated into another one of his incoherent alternate universes on the subject.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Terror Trail.
This is a brand of Muir strip that I've seen before. He pulls this sort of smug both-siding when he sees defeat looming in the distance. Partially to create a reality where, no, no, a loss isn't coming up, the Dems are naturally inferior, they're scum, they can't win, and partially to tell himself that, nah, he's not gonna be the loser, it's the dirty GOP who just won't commit, if they were just more tuff, they'd win. And so he pretends he's not one of the guys attached to the loss, he's part of the vital resurgent new political movement that will soon claim its natural place!
It's more pleasant than admitting he's an old reactionary nitwit who's watching the program he backed collapse into disaster.
Yet again.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Secret Four.
The thing that really strikes you is how pathetic all this is, grumbling, whiny, brainless misogyny trying to pretend it is something tough, and thoughtful and deep.
I will start with a simple statement. Muir's art, to begin with, was very bad.
And it has somehow managed only to get worse since then.
So, the breakdown. To start with, Muir's line work is terrible--awkward, choppy and graceless, with the appearance of a rough sketch having been given a very rudimentary clean up digitally. Characters' bodies are generally a sort of blobbish shape. Women are a skinnier blobbish shape with a few other shapes attached, but that's a discussion we'll get into later. The body is completed with a pair of very noodly arms and either an oval, smoothed rectangle, or oval and triangle attached to serve as a head and face, with a lot of very elementary work done to cover this up. One can argue that this is an almost universal technique, but one is supposed to develop further techniques to mask this and Muir had not. He is bad at hands, producing both lots of people holding mugs, other things and putting them in pockets and other, more dreadful horrors. Eyes are slits or covered with glasses. Women usually have a stereotypical "cupid's bow" to serve as a mouth (especially in closeups), and men usually don't have a mouth, just some sort of beard and mustache combination that serves to fame where the mouth might be. Obviously, as these are drawings, exceptions will exist, but they're usually not improvements, just the odd panel where Zed or Damon flashes a toothy grimace.
Backgrounds are worse--undeveloped, monochromatic planes most of the time, with the occasional prop thrown in either as filler or for the characters to interact with. Badly. Muir is terrible at perspective, resulting in things like tables that exist simultaneously level with and at angle from the characters, and an overall flat, unreal look. The cast, on the whole, seem to move through a badly abstracted world, one that is barely keeping itself together. It's not unusual to see a standing cast member apparently hefting a laptop around as they use it, the stand-up desk that is implicitly there on examination being left out as an unimportant detail. And it gets worse.
Muir's fascination with cutting and pasting stock poses as a short cut is already evident. Any perusal of the archive acquaints one with such classics as Zed/Damon pouring coffee, Zed/Damon holding some sort of handheld device awkwardly, Jan/Sam practicing yoga on their desk, and of course, Cast Stands Around. Sometimes a character will be presented in the same pose throughout an entire strip; other times, they be presented in essentially the same pose with subtle differences, but done in a choppy manner so that there is no illusion of motion.
And indeed, that's another big problem with Muir's art at this stage. He's bad at action, so most of the time, the feel is of looking at a series of still images. And of course, one might say that is what you're doing... but a good comic artist can make your mind fill in the gaps. Muir doesn't do that. There is something truly lifeless in his imagery, and many of his habits and practices make things worse. Further, some of his habits--for example, something that happened multiple occasions, Damon or Zed spending entire strips pouring coffee into a single mug during a conversation--managed to be not merely lifeless, but broke the strip's reality as they did this.
And now we come to another matter--Muir's cheesecake, his attempts to draw female characters for titillation. Note 'attempts'. He's really bad at this. First off, at this stage, his drawings of the female form are like the rest of his artwork, very crude and angular. There's a weird sense of abstraction here that undercuts what Muir's attempting--my joke at the time was 'cubist cheesecake'.
While this more or less nullifies what Muir's attempting, it doesn't disguise it. Women constantly pose for the imaginary camera, leaning over or back, and arching their legs. Their outfits are generally skimpy--Sam favors flowing dresses, and Jan... Jan's favorite outfit involves a pair of low-rise cargo pants that somehow stay on despite gravity, not infrequently revealing a little whale tail. A corporate executive dressing like That One Intern.
Everything named here is going to get worse in the future. Especially the cheesecake. We will explore why it all somehow got worse in time. But one thing that was arguably holding it back from achieving its later levels of awful was that Muir wasn't trying too hard at this stage. For most of the Mystery Business(tm) Era, it was a largely dialogue-driven office comedy, which wasn't even really attempting much action to begin with. It was a bad office comedy, with bad dialogue, and the art mostly failed at what it was attempting, but oh, God, do we have such deep failures to consider up ahead, as Muir decided he was going to follow his dream and try to be a latter-day Milt Caniff.
You might wonder how such a bad artist got the treatment he did even in the face of Right Wing cultural desperation. As we're going to demonstrate... it was very much a matter of knowing the right people.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Do or Die.
This is what Muir produces when he tries to imagine a master race. Obnoxious, repulsive racists convinced of their own superiority, and easily persuaded that the bloody purge is coming any day now. Kiko fails as a sympathetic character on every level. She's not just a clumsy propaganda piece, she's such a horror that anyone outside the racist bubble wants her to lose.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Diamond Queen.
I'm half expecting another one of Muir's "Ha! Made you think I was a Nazi" bits in the near future, where he thinks he's being clever instead of trying to have it both ways. But whether it happens or not, the fact remains that the Nazi apologia I've been seeing as inevitable given the twist of his politics has happened, and it's just as awful and just as brain-dead as I thought it would be.
I mean, he's still tossing out the "Hitler was a socialist" canard, people.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Elmo the Fearless.
One thing that makes the endless bitching the cast mutters about how persecuted they are is that they inevitably act like smug jackasses about it in between the bitching.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Dragon's Net.
One of the fascinating things about Muir over the years is watching the paranoia grow gradually more all-encompassing. It was always there--even in the early years, he still saw the media as filled with scheming wreckers--but these days, you get the impression there's nowhere he doesn't see the insidious hand of the Conspiracy.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Vanishing Dagger.
And we segue right from the latest awful robot sex plot back into the latest awful 'Evil Conspiracy of Evil be perving' plot. All of which underlines the extent to which Muir is out of ideas, and his eternal need to bemoan how put upon his cast is.
With their hi-tech robot bodyguards we've just had to endure a ridiculous plotline about.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because King of the Circus.
...
I assume somebody paid to have this be their cameo in the strip.
...
...
That apparently is what we're looking at here.
...
...
...
The mind boggles.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Moon Riders.
Well, more proof you can always count on Muir to double down on bad ideas on the vague notion that they'll work if he just keeps at them.
So, as mentioned, the catastrophic end of Muir's syndication run likely played a significant part in his finally just blowing up one of the foundations of the strip, its office comedy setting. But there were other reasons Muir pulled the trigger on it, one of which he'd actually set in motion towards the start of the year it would end.
Simply put, Mystery Business(tm) had stuck around on a certain level of inertia because it at the very least gave Muir a simple place to bring all his characters together and have them talk. But Sam's motherhood meant--at least in Muir's reactionary universe--that she would have to leave that setting. Now, obviously, Jan and Damon had a close enough relationship to keep in contact with Sam anyway... but that just underlined how redundant Mystery Business(tm) was at this point.
And that was a death sentence, because Muir was transparently tired and unenthusiastic about the office comedy premise at this point. It had consistently failed to launch as a setting. Muir's attempts at office humor storylines were all hackneyed and ill-developed, scuttled not only by his poor sense of humor, but the lack of most of the material that a workplace comedy needs to function. Mystery Business(tm) had failed to produce much in the way of a supporting cast. Aside from the main four, there were two or possibly three such characters produced. All of them boasted only simple first names, one of which was only mentioned in passing, and none of them producing any significant plotline or interaction with the main characters. Suzi, the intern who was into Zed, came the closest, and even she faded after a few strips and once again, only ranked a terrible offscreen death years later. A clear boss character never emerged--Jan was pressed into this service every now and then, but it was never clearly defined, something that only increased the ridiculousness of her situation, a peer when Muir needed her to lose break room arguments, a superior when Muir needed a character to come in and yammer about deadlines. Ultimately, Mystery Business(tm) had never worked as a setting, and that was its doom when Muir got tired of it.
It's ironic to note that for all their manifest insanity, the Compound, its later attachment Gunpowder County, with environs, and even the strange, shadowy, shifting world of the Transition Era inspired more characters almost immediately, even if some are robots and others have vanished into the ether. (Who remembers Suzy Q? Show of hands, people.) Fundamentally, Muir didn't really want to be Scott Adams, even if he did like Dilbert and see it as a model he could use to make his own strip. No, his heart could never be in it, because what he really wanted was to be Milt Caniff.
And that will lead to our next segment, where we consider the art of the Mystery Business(tm) Era.
With a shudder.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Flaming Disc.
I've said it before, and I will say it again... I am just in the weeds about the robot sex jokes.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Elmo the Mighty.
There is something bleakly comic about how the endless accusations of how the cast are being victimized by the perv-elite have gradually risen through the ranks.
That and how Muir doesn't seem to realize the inherent hypocrisy and projection in the charge. Once again, when he imagines a bad guy, he pretty much imagines himself.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Midnight Man.
I don't know why Skye's gone Howler Monkey over that. Zed reacting with incredible aggression to everyday annoyances is pretty much normal.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Lion Man.
As Muir declares victory yet again, because in the game in his head, he will not only shift the goalposts in whatever directions he wants, he will change the points system, we await him explaining that gay rights and women's equality are evil lies and another things the masses have wisely abandoned as we enter the new age of chudifcation.
This present 'the cast just yammers at each other plotline' is so tiresome. It just emphasizes how unpleasant the cast are. They are simply awful and hateful and they think that all this makes them better than other people.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Great Radium Mystery.
As Muir comforts himself that, yeah, yeah, things are going well, people are on HIS side, let's consider the many fails of this little strip.
Muir imagines he comes across as reasonable. He comes across as a bloodthirsty fascist.
Muir imagines he comes across as mature and his opponents as entitled and childish. In fact, not only does he come across entitled and childish, but his dismissal of his opponents as that underlines his moral vacuity and hypocrisy. Muir will shriek about how he is being tyrannically oppressed because his every bigoted whim isn't being indulged, but when actually tyrannical oppression is occurring, he won't merely applaud because his people are doing it. No, he'll whine that it isn't going far enough because anyone who doesn't agree with him isn't being liquidated.
Muir imagines that he comes across as calm and serene. In fact he comes across as panicked, because anyone who knows his work has seen this before--Muir shutting his eyes as the failures pile up and insisting that glorious victory is inevitable.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Red Glove.
Muir appears to have fallen for an online rumor hook, line, and sinker. Let's put aside the fact that the New IRA, the present group that actually occasionally does terrorism, has about 200 members, which makes its ability to perform this threat... shall we say, doubtful. The actual IRA--well, IRAs, there have been quite a few splinter groups--is a generally left-wing organization with traditional ties to the Palestinian liberation movement, who are largely more interested in getting the British out of Northern Ireland so the island can be united than this sort of blood and soil bullshit. But hey, Muir is convinced he just loves the Irish, so he falls for this. Which by the way, is largely being represented as coming from Irish and British intelligence sources. (Hell, fun fact, most of the Irish/Norn Iron bigot squad are resentful of this, and are convinced this is a government plot to tie them with being... terrorists!) But again, Muir thinks this is a cool thing, and more proof of how people everywhere are getting With It, and so we get this weird and horny gushing over the idea.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Lion's Claws.
It's interesting to try and parse what Muir views as "respecting another's culture", because this strip is so blatantly hypocritical you're left holding air. In the end of course the old equation--Muir demands everything from others, while insisting that nothing be required of him, and if this isn't followed, then he considers himself horribly oppressed.
Now, I mentioned that Muir took most of October off. While the exact reason for that isn't clear, it probably had something to do with DbD being pulled from syndication in that very month, and him working to shift to its new, purely online existence. 2007 had earlier seen Muir take a break in February as a result of his trip to Iraq, during which he reprinted older comics. The October break saw no such practice. It was (and is) simply a void in that year's calendar.
So what lead to this sudden fall? Well, obviously, nobody's come forward and given a full account, and I suspect that whoever told Muir it was happening gave him a line of guff, but I don't think it's a coincidence that this came after a strip depicting Hillary Clinton in blackface acquired a great deal of notoriety. (Muir was doing another variation of his "Democrats are the real racists" spiel, incidentally, as well as his usual bashing of Hillary.) That said, I think Muir's ability to produce stupid controversy was the final straw, not the sole cause. The fact was that DbD was an unfunny, badly drawn mess and wasn't catching on--the sympathetic newspaper owners who'd given it a chance were likely finding it an embarrassment even before Muir made it a notorious one. In truth, Muir had been fortunate to get syndicated at all, the recipient of the sort of favoritism he was constantly insisting minorities and women got. As I've noted, the search for a Right-Wing Doonesbury has gifted a lot of hacks chances they didn't deserve. Muir was just one of them.
I'd argue the end of syndication and its psychic effects of Muir almost certainly played a role in the shuttering of Mystery Business(tm). (Though as I plan on noting there were others.) And it also definitely fueled Muir's persecution complex, though this remained in its nascent state in the immediate future. But for broader effect--the strip's brief flirtation with mainstream relevance ended, and honestly, to much of the world, DbD barely left a ripple. It would move to an online space that would simply get crazier and crazier as the years passed.
Ironically, the most lasting effects that syndication wrought on the strip were the earliest, from the changes in Jan and Sam's ethnicity, and perhaps the most visually striking, the move to full Sunday strips. For the first three years and two months of its existence, while DbD had Sunday strips, they were standard single-rowed ones. Early in 2006, one year into syndication, the strip began to have full Sundays, though many of the initial batch are lost--for the first six months, the full Sundays ran for one day on the site only and then were replaced by the opening panels only. (Muir mentioned a plan to bring the full comics back to the site, but never did it.) This was almost assuredly about making sure the strip remained in the comic section on Sundays, instead of getting shuffled to the editorial page. But of course, Muir kept up with it afterwards.
Indeed, it's safe to say the brush with syndication would help annihilate the foundations of the strip as it had been. But then, Mystery Business(tm) had been on shaky ground for awhile, as we're going to see.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Bull's Eye.
Muir's ability to be self-righteous about being wretched has always been a thing, it's just that the wretchedness has gotten oh, so worse over the years.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Brass Bullet.
As Muir insists that people who do in fact exist don't exist, I feel I must mention that at various points in his life Vlad III Tepes was the sworn vassal of the Ottoman Sultan...
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Voice on the Wire.
As we watch Muir repeat the Right-wing urban legend that pork functions as some sort of Muslim kryptonite, let's recall that I'm pretty sure it was Sam who drove the feral hogs in there originally.
But then, as we keep seeing, time and space are bendable in DbD and causality can be warped at will.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Gray Ghost.
Sometimes, Sam really gets to revel in the crossgender Id thing. And moments like these tend to be just those times, Muir trying to demonstrate that he's smart and learned, he is, but also rough and In Your Face.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Red Ace.
And Muir once again demonstrates that Sam is now on Marvel's comic time, where her age can vary wildly from strip to strip. Of course, we've seen Muir wax sentimental about the 1970s before, the era where he was a kid--but an old enough kid to have some freedom. And by the time he stopped being a kid during it, Jimmy Carter was in charge, so Muir could tell himself all the bad things were his fault. Because, obviously, this is a stunningly simplistic, naive, even incorrect summation of the 1970s.
Another thing poking out is that Muir misses large swathes of what the society of the New Deal built that his people have been working to destroy. But he can't accept that, so he has to tell himself that it was great despite all that "socialism" and also, if we bring back the racism, things will be good again. Hence his continued allegiance to the people trying to do that, despite the fact that they keep failing.
To quote, Dylan, only a pawn in their game.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Mystery Ship.
It's kind of amazing how much of this comic is now just references to two movies, over and over and over...
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Liberty, A Daughter of the USA.
There's a fascinating element to all this pathetic whining, as Muir talks about actual problems, just you know, upside down and backwards. It's all in an effort to avoid admitting that the things he's been cheerleading are what's making the problem worse, and it's hard to get the feeling that at the bottom of him, Muir knows the project's failing. But again, he can't admit his ideals don't work, so we get the phantom conspiracies and the woo.
The Iraq storyline wrapped up in a sluggish fashion over the course of September and October, with Muir repeating the same points he'd made throughout as he brought things to a close. Things were made more sluggish as Muir wound up taking a sizable break at the start of October, which we will explore in greater depth later. But in November, Zed was back home, reunited with his wife, who had been joined by her mother and had been retconned to be 39.
Sam's mother was... well, much like Jan's father, a stereotypical foreigner speaking slightly broken English leavened with words from her native tongue. (Hence my giving her yet another Superfriends nickname, Samurai Mom.) She would stick around on the margins of the strip for most of the same reasons he did, but that's for another story. Sam's age retcon...
Well, Muir had likely realized that having a 45 year old woman cheerfully going through her first pregnancy as if it were no big deal might not quite work, and so shaved six years off Sam's age. The explanation of why Sam had lied about her age to Zed for so long was strange, convoluted and nonsensical, which is probably why Muir never bothered explaining her future age-downs, just doing them. (We will talk of this again.) Notably, this still left Sam and Skye with about a decade and a half between them, but then, as that whole nonsensical explanation offered in the retcon makes clear, Muir's fictional universe does not bear any examination.
And then, having reunited his cast, Muir had Sam go into labor at the airport, the cast rushed to the hospital, and Sam and Zed finally spawned the twins. It was all very much in what I've come to call the 'Sitcom from Hell' vein, where Muir manages to meld a great deal of hackneyed, obvious humor and situations only done slightly off, and with the deep unpleasantness that is the cast's calling card. As things finally wrapped up and the cast settled in...
They all got the news that Mystery Business(tm) had folded.
Yep, we're hitting the end of the era, folks.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Adventures of Peg O' the Ring.
A reminder that Muir isn't talking about the January 6th thugs, whose release by pardon he saw as just and good, but about the various people that the Trump Regime has had to let go because they arrested them speciously. Because due process is for he and him, except, no, they also want a free out when it finds them guilty of the crimes they inevitably commit.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Under the Crescent.
And we move from pretending that Trump is mostly great to pretending that everybody is plotting against Muir again.
Always fun to see Muir spiraling.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Graft.
This manages to be as pathetic as it is vile, an illustration of just how much Muir has warped himself. He's told himself that being a cowardly bigot is being a brave patriot so long that he doesn't know what bravery and patriotism actually are anymore, and so as he applauds awfulness while he can, as the failures inevitably happen, he winds up muttering pathetic rationalizations to avoid the simple fact that he's awful person putting his trust in worse people, trying to extract joy from misery and failure.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Broken Coin.
Obviously, at least part of the reason Sam is the one muttering this swill is to give Muir cover. "Oh, no, no, it's not me, Sam, you know, she's feisty, she's a redhead, her ladyparts, they get in a twist sometimes..."
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Black Box.
...
Muir giving into all of his antisemitic impulses, all of them, has certainly been a thing.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Trey O' Hearts.
There's something so quietly pathetic in the inner lives of people who essentially pay so Muir can draw them--badly--visiting his redneck Legion of Doom, sucking up to the cast, getting to fire imaginary hi-tech guns, and fantasize about essentially being SS guards at a concentration camp.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Master Key (1914).
It's so tiresome when Muir spins his wheels by having Zed and Sam agreeing about braindead fascist talking points for days on end.
Naomi first appears as a past military comrade of Zed's, an Israeli military contractor who simply pops up to reaffirm Zed's badass credentials. and join in the general abuse of Jan during this storyline. But then, after a week, Muir decides to use her for some cheap sentimental drama and ALSO decides that she's been hired by Jan's dad to keep an eye on her daughter. (So either the military are just letting an unaffiliated mercenary stroll around because, hey, she's cool, she's from an ally, or they're letting a contractor take a side job from a private citizen, neither of which are great.) While this is yet another display of Muir's growing fascination of using Don Portago as an Instant Plot Coupon Dispenser, the more interesting thing is Naomi herself. Somehow, even though she truthfully doesn't seem too distinguishable from the various other soldiers Muir bespecks this storyline with, she tickles Muir's fancy and just keeps showing up throughout.
Because, that's the other thing about this story--it's long. While the original plan appears to have had this go on for a month--Muir has Zed toss that time out early on--things just dragged on so that Jan and Zed wound up spending most of 2007 in Iraq. And Muir was no more skilled at crafting storylines then as he is now--the entire sojourn is repetitive, formless, and dull. Jan gets taught the same jingoistic, racist messages over and over, all while the real Iraq burned, and Muir struggles to ignore it alongside the rest of reality.
And through it all, Naomi just... hangs around. It's clear that she'd tickled Muir's fancy somehow, likely by his own twisted counterfeit philosemitism which saw Israelis as admirable because they were so good at dealing with those evil Muslims. She likewise gave a window in what was going to be Zed's ever-expanding badass past, which Muir must have found convenient. Still, a casual reader from this era would probably be shocked to learn this incidental character was going to become a major supporting character and at times a member of the main cast. Indeed, Naomi was a good indicator of the future of DbD, a future that was more bizarre, more insane and more unpleasant than its present.
And that present was quite unpleasant indeed.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Lucille Love, Girl of Mystery.
The closest thing to interesting in this racist swill is what lies beneath it. Muir is repeating various idiotic racist shibboleths wholeheartedly, not even bothering to realize that they're fucking nonsense that are wrong on every level.
Because, as I keep noting, Mr. 'Ise Independent Thinker' is a pliable dullard who will repeat any bit of vile bullshit if it tells him he's a special boy, while thinking this shows how clever he is.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Queen of the Jungle.
As we take in this pathetic racist swill, a reminder that the population of the US is nearly 350 million, making Muir's impressive sounding number look... well, small.
Especially when you realize that our mighty Murican is quaking in his boots about women and children.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Jungle Goddess.
As we look at this lazy little cartoon, let's all savor the fact that these days you don't even have to wait a comic or two for Muir's declaration of how very much Nazis the Democrats are to be ironically undercut by him using Nazi-style rhetoric.
These days, it usually follows in a panel or two.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because A Dangerous Adventure.
Somehow, the feigned humility only makes the noxious ego that underlies all this stand out even more.
Also, the bad fanservice hits extra-nightmare fuel here.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Miracles of the Jungle.
...
There's something amazing in Muir's ability to make something that is supposed to be nothing happening feel like an extra level of nothing, filler that seems astonishingly free of actual content. It's a bad kind of amazing, but it's still amazing.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Purple Riders.
There's something quite amusing about how even as Muir tries to insist how rugged and individualistic he is, it's done with whining, and complaining and bitterly insisting how unfair he's being treated by the evil forces of Leftism, while sucking up to one of his clay-footed idols, and looking to him for ideas on how to think.
So typical of our thin-skinned, brittle-boned aspiring ubermensch.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Fighting Fate.
...
The way he keeps acting like this is some sort of awesome accomplishment...
Zed's Iraq tour was the first true Captain Mitty storyline, but it must be pointed out that he is largely out of focus for it--an important background detail of the storyline, one who allows the entire thing to happen, but not the main character. No, that is Jan, filling the old propaganda role of the skeptical liberal journalist who comes to realize just how vital this war is, how evil our opponents are, and how dedicated our troops are.
I noted last time that this was accomplished with a handwave--Jan's father just fixes it, because he can, that's what he does--but I really should zoom in on how forced all this is. While a weak explanation is made of Jan doing this to support Zed, there's very little explanation of how this does this, precisely, and again, once they're over there, Jan largely winds up doing her own thing and having troops tell her that everything she knows is wrong. It's quite clear from a textual standpoint that Jan is in Iraq because she's the sort of character you need over there, and Muir's explanations of the hows and whys are flimsy. For that matter, Jan's storyline is fairly bland. She meets interchangeable troops who are all happy to be there, and annoyed at the perfidious liberals insisting that they aren't. She sees it demonstrated that the native Iraqis are being treated well by them, and in no danger from them. She discovers that local insurgents are vile scum not worthy of her regard. And she discovers the United States press are nakedly biased and laughably incompetent. In essence, everything that Muir had been stating was the case prior to the storyline is confirmed to be exactly correct during it.
Saying this was a tone-deaf and deluded take doesn't cover it. After all, even Muir seems to regard his Iraq War boosterism with a certain level of embarrassment these days, even if it's with the usual qualifiers and avoidance of any real introspection that you'd expect from him. But remember, Muir was writing this in 2007, the year where the occupation truly unraveled. Muir wrote of a deluded press misleading the American public about what was a massive success just as that press began to produce stories that showed that things were going worse than all but the most skeptical of critics had imagined.
And so, by itself, the main storyline was just a dull, mendacious propaganda piece that was flimsily constructed and monumentally ill-timed. Even Jan's move rightwards was simply Muir doing what he'd been doing prior. No, the importance here lies largely in two areas. One obviously is Zed's continuing move towards becoming the Captain Mitty he is today, which we do see throughout the tale. But more importantly, Muir was about to add a new character, one who would stick and be a significant part of the Transition Era and the early portions of the Compound Era. The exceptionally odd figure who is... Naomi.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Breaking Through.
...
...
At this point, I think it's safe to say this going places Muir doesn't even realize it's going.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Lost City.
Somehow, this manages to be half-cooked and disjointed even among strips where Muir has given up being anything but half-cooked and disjointed.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Invisible Hand.
We're just getting smashed over the head with movies Muir liked in his twenties at this point.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Hidden Dangers.
A less paranoid man might realize that this is because he's chosen a fundraising model that closely resembles many forms of financial fraud and adjust his methods accordingly, possibly by seeking out a respected organization to handle this for him.
But obviously, Muir knows better than that.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Smashing Barriers.
It's bitterly amusing to watch Muir give yet another display of multiple level FAIL and think it's showing how clever he is. We see, in one strip, the Muir who is stuck in a bad simulacrum of his own childhood, the man who can admire the sight of things while not getting the sense of them, the pliable old reactionary spouting the same garbage decades after the world moved on, and the man stuck in a hell that he has both made himself and had reinforced by the movement he supported. All in one terribly drawn, terribly written strip.
And he doesn't see it, of course. Thinks he's done a great job, and is showing what a sensible man he is.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Man of Might.
...
This is Muir's idea of quirky family dynamics.
And effective fund-raising.
Zed and Sam's relationship had been in sort of a holding pattern since around 2005, when he started treating them as an actual couple, and frankly had been approaching it earlier, as the period of de facto coupleship prior to that wasn't too different. Just now, it was clear that they were dating and sleeping with each other, where previously, you sort of thought they were, but weren't sure. Muir seems to have toyed with shaking the dynamic up when he introduced a young intern named Suzi with a thing for Zed, but this rudimentary storyline died after two strips, and Suzi only ranked a horrible offscreen death years later that was mentioned in passing to allow Muir to indulge even more of his now overwhelming misogyny, racism and Islamophobia. Skye's arrival just added her being, well, awful while keeping the overall relationship the same. So, Muir finally did something that shook things up--he had Sam wind up pregnant just as Zed got called back into service.
Now, Sam previously had shown little interest in or proclivity for motherhood--indeed, she'd even been fairly dismissive of it--but that was the Early Period, where Muir just wanted her and Zed to be a couple of snarky urban professionals. Now that they were ever more Muir's vision of an ideal American couple, well, she and Zed just took it as given that they'd have kids now, which meant marriage. Interestingly, neither of them seemed particularly worried about the fact that Sam was a woman in her forties going through her first pregnancy.
Put a pin in this, there's bullshit coming.
The pair hurried off to Vegas, tied the knot--they had an Elvis wedding--and just like that, there'd been a profound change in the status quo. And Muir having quietly just retconned Sam's entire attitude towards parenthood was, well, going to retcon a lot more in the future. Oh, were changes coming. Indeed, without realizing he'd done it, Muir had just quietly set a charge under what had been the core premise of the strip so far, but that was lurking in the background.
Soon, Zed would be heading overseas with Jan somehow getting to play journalist because... look, her dad is ultrarich magic, all right? For Sam though, this meant lots of "jokes" playing up her being Zed's loyal, pregnant wife waiting for him to get back as he risked his life.
This isn't particularly subtle propaganda. But then it hardly has been at this point.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because A Woman in the Web.
So, this is the next week and a half, eh? Muir whining and begging for more money while insisting, no, no, that's not what he's doing.
...
Oh, boy, that's going to be tiresome.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Iron Test.
...
Sometimes, the sheer breadth and depth of Muir's hypocrisy gets to you.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because A Fight for Millions.
Ahh, we're really entering the sleaziest part of the Begging Bowl period...
It's become something of a tradition at this point.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Secret Kingdom.
Here we get another example of Muir thinking a display of his ignorance is a display of knowledge, and a display of his pathologies is a display of artistic vision.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Fighting Trail.
As always, there's something bleakly amusing when Muir trots out the tropes of Nazi propaganda while not realizing he's doing it.
Oh, and having his 'deep blue leviathan' be black while attacking a blue ship?
Chef's kiss. No notes.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Strange Case of Mary Page.
It's almost a perfect representation of the strip these days--cheap sexism, ranting about "communism", and a lousy attempt at a gag. Really, just some racism, and this would have been the Platonic DbD of this era.
The transformational storyline of the Late Period wouldn't have happened without a Dubya program that I'm going to have to discuss, the embedded journalist program. Throughout the Iraq War, journalists were 'embedded' in various combat units for lengths of time. While supposedly this was about superior access to allow for more in-depth reporting, critics argued it destroyed any pretense of objectivity, encouraging the journalists to identify with the units they were embedded with. Obviously, results varied--the classic Generation Kill, after all, was produced by just such an embedded reporter. And then...
Muir's selection as an 'embedded reporter' came very late in the day for the program, and was undeniably politically motivated. His qualifications were negligible--he was, after all, a syndicated cartoonist whose strip was appearing in a mere four papers. But he did have some connections to the GOP's pet bloggers--we'll discuss this when we wrap up this era--and that's likely most of what got him in. And of course, Muir was motivated. To his mind, the people, manipulated by the lying press, had betrayed the righteous government that had done so much good, and brought the treacherous Democrats back into power. People needed to see the truth, to be brought back into the right way of thinking. And so Muir was off to Iraq.
For five days.
As should be obvious, this wasn't enough time for any sort of in depth "reporting", but it was enough time for a man who was quite interested in producing propaganda to get the material for it, especially if he was simply going to reinforce his priors. (Which, as we will see, is precisely what he did.) And so, Muir came back to produce his story. There were many ways he could have written it.
But it was Muir, so we naturally got his self-insert being recalled to active duty, because he was so badass. It was the sort of choice that a more reasonable person might have realized was a mistake, tone-deaf, insensitive, hell, down right pathetic, but, well, this is Muir. He didn't realize how this might look to someone less... sympathetic. Hell, he was going to give Captain Mitty even more of the life he wished he had.
Zed was going to get married before shipping off, with a family on the way. As I said, the transformational storyline of the Late Period, and oh boy, do we have a lot to talk about in the next installment...
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Purple Mask.
I consider this the unofficial confirmation that Muir ended that previous storyline early.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Goddess.
There's a part of me that suspects that Muir started to realize on some level that he was revealing how little he actually knew about the Founding Fathers and the Revolutionary War, on top of which he had no way to wrap the storyline up, so...
The escape hatch.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Fates and Flora Fourflush.
The fascinating thing is this demonstrates not only Muir's delusional, racist, sexist misunderstanding of the present, but his equally delusional, racist, sexist misunderstanding of the past.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Adventures of Kathlyn.
Ahh, yes. The Constitution that exists in Muir's head that puts counties above the federal government, lets them overthrow the government whenever they lose, and also is supposed to establish a white ethnostate.
Again, this is all as pathetic as it is reprehensible.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Blazing the Overland Trail.
Has he mentioned he thinks letting non-whites live here is treason? Because he thinks that.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Perils of the Wilderness.
Did I call it, or did I call it?
This whiny, pathetic, hateful little screed is Muir imagining himself to be so, SO patriotic.
Because he hates this country, and he hates everything that's decent. But he has to pretend to himself that he doesn't.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Adventures of Captain Africa.
At the time of this writing, in strip Muir has mistakenly placed the signing of the Declaration twenty-six years after the Boston Massacre. It was, in fact, six years and four months, the Massacre occurring March 5th, 1770. (I put this down because Muir isn't above re-editing boo-boos like this out afterwards, so I'm attempting to immortalize the error.) And that clumsy mistake typifies this whole storyline, such as it is. Muir is, as he has in fact been doing from almost the beginning of the strip, trying to appropriate the Founding Fathers for his own politics. But Muir doesn't understand them, barely engages with them. He doesn't really want to learn things because he wants myth, which is why you get things like the clumsy misdating, Muir not getting the facts right because he didn't even learn them to begin with.
But Muir's bad at myth too. As we see with this entire storyline. And his inability to notice that Crispus Attucks puts the lie to the 'White Men' bullshit he's been pushing with ever-increasing force over the last decade. Hell, I'm fully expecting him to explain that this shows how extra right he is soon. He keeps to his pattern.
By 2006, both the political situation and Muir's strip had changed. As noted before, Muir had painted the opposition to the Iraq War as a bunch of shiftless, cowardly hippies during the War's buildup--after the quick fall of Saddam's government, he went to ignoring them outright, clearly feeling that the matter was over and he had won. However, the opposition to the War didn't stop and instead broadened, especially as toppling Saddam did not in fact lead to a speedy peace, but instead to a violent insurgency and lengthy occupation. Now, as noted last time, Muir's response to what was actually happening in Iraq was a mixture of studiously ignoring it, and actively gaslighting about it, all while whining about how the press/Democrats/people were misleading the public and being unpatriotic and stuff. But that still left him a more visible, militant Left to deal with than the sort of genteel establishment liberalism represented by Jan. Muir could see the need for another Left character.
And of course, there were other issues with Jan--while she was still allowed moments of her previous feckless idiocy to show what Muir imagined was the liberal viewpoint, her relationship with Damon moved her firmly into one of the good ones, a person Muir imagined was only kept from seeing the transcendent truth by sentimentality, habit, and of course, the evil Leftist conspiracy to lead good young women like her astray. While she hadn't moved completely to her Fox Liberal role yet of showing the audience just how wretched the Democrats were by having this liberal staring agog at their perfidy, she was already making moves in that direction. And of course, both these moves had another source that we'll talk about in the future when we talk about a... certain aspects of the strip, and how it stood at this time. (Let's put a pin in that one, all right?)
Now, the fact was Muir didn't mind this, because he'd clearly had a lot of fun with his vision of the anti-war Left during the buildup, people he enjoyed punching even more than the Democrats. That undifferentiated blob of stupid hippies started showing up again, and then in 2006, a couple were shown praising themselves for booing Hillary Clinton, allowing Muir to bash both her and them simultaneously. A couple strips later, and "Sky" explains that she's going to go visit her in Florida, one of the few clear references to the setting at this point.
And boom. Like that, Sam suddenly had a younger sibling. (That Sam had never mentioned such a sibling previously or the fact that, initially, Sam and her sister had in the vicinity of twenty years between them were just part of the shoddy construction.) Skye--she gained the 'e' on her third appearance--was that mass of dirty hippie peaceniks concentrated into one character. Written to be as obnoxious as possible, she was lazy, perennially unemployed, viciously self-righteous, in essence, every form of sheer awfulness that Muir imagined when he imagined a leftist. She willfully sponges off her sister, a complete parasite. Indeed, Skye isn't going to have any sort of discernible job for years, just floating around and being "left". She's rude, childish, and egotistical. Of course, so is the rest of Muir's cast, but Muir doesn't realize that, he thinks they're quirky and lovable. Another thing that will be come clear very quickly is that Skye's bluntness means she frequently puts her arguments rather forcibly, making the supposedly right-thinking cast look even worse. But again, Muir doesn't notice that. He simply assumes he's built a loser, and that the audience will respond as expected.
And so, his new straw leftist in hand, Muir waits for the Democrats' inevitable defeat in 2006 so he can chuckle about them thinking all this criticism of the glorious war was a good idea.
The Democrats win control of Congress. Muir is irritated, but still convinced that it's all just a temporary disturbance. And that will produce... well, a lot. Oh, such a lot.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Riding with Buffalo Bill.
As Muir pulls out one of his most tired running gags in this baffling attempt at a storyline, I should mention this underlines the vast ignorance under his pose of learned patriot. Franklin, obviously wasn't in Boston during the Massacre--aside from this being well after he'd largely moved to Philadelphia, it was when he was the Colonial Postmaster, and in fact, living in England.
But then, Muir is stuck in the Kiddies' Own version of history.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Gunfighters of the Northwest.
Muir remains all in on the whole 'remind the audience of better works' thing...
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Great Adventures of Captain Kidd.
It's kind of amazing how clumsy this is in every particular. A stupid gag that involves warping characters to happen, occurring in a bizarre and ludicrous situation that makes no sense and has no narrative weight.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Lost Planet.
Because Zed's proud White Trashism blends so well with patrician lawyer John Adams.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Son of Geronimo.
This is probably the cleverest thing Muir has done with the Begging Bowl in a while.
But that's a low bar to clear.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Blackhawk.
So, is this going to be a time travel story, or a VR simulation story with time travel elements?
Ehh, mostly a chance for Muir to bludgeon us with his ignorant jingoism masquerading as patriotism. Again.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because King of the Congo.
Every now and then, Muir makes a cartoon that underlines there's a tiny part of him, somewhere, that knows he's a fucking parody of humanity hating on people who are better than him, and desperately telling himself that the absolute garbage he's allied with are the champions he's saying they are no matter how many times they keep demonstrating that nope, wrong again.
And that tiny part makes the part of him that honestly believes this bullshit worse.
I noted in the past that the tone of the Early Period was largely one of triumphalism, an endless declaration that Muir's ideals were right, his opponents were wrong, and everything was going to go this way forever. While much of this could be chalked up to Muir's own political attitudes, it was also the result of the time it was created in. The Early Mystery Business(tm) Period, after all, did not just begin 2002, but November of 2002, where the combination of the post-9/11 bump, a particularly listless Democratic Party campaign, and just a pinch of gerrymandering had resulted in the Republicans not only gaining the Senate, but increasing their seats in the House, something that seldom happens for the President's party in midterms. This era of partisan triumph floated right over the 2004 elections, where there was another increase of the House majority (albeit with gerrymandering playing an even bigger part) and Bush not only was re-elected, but won a majority of the popular vote. While Muir was overstating things and painting them in his usual hamfisted, delirious manner, this was the brief time when he was roughly in sync with the zeitgeist. Pundits and political analysts talked of a permanent Republican majority. The opposition to the Iraq War, while substantial, was largely treated as an impotent, quixotic movement, and, initially, this helped make it so. And so Muir started 2005, when remember, his strip was truly entering the public eye, in high spirits.
In retrospect, of course, this very appearance of incredible power was deceptive. Bush's popular vote victory was quite narrow, especially for a wartime incumbent. The Republican majority was built on many narrow wins and was far less functional than one would think, as the cynical pragmatists had been gradually starting to get replaced by incompetent true believers, a process that was going to get worse in the years ahead as newer, more delusional strains of fanatics. Corruption was endemic for both brands, simply because the GOP's dominant brand of cynicism breeds crooks and opportunists. And the opposition to many of Bush's policies was stronger than it seemed, while the support was more shallow.
And of course, there was a simple fact--most of the W. Bush administration's signature policies were bad ideas. Most notably, that war Muir was so very fond of. And as bad ideas are wont to, they went badly. Especially, once again, that war. But all of this was going to take a while to set in. What happened first was the W. Bush administration blowing its political capital on two failed initiatives in a monumental act of hubris, a move to partially privatize Social Security that offended the Left and Center... and a move for an immigrant amnesty that offended the Right. Muir himself would even grumble about that one, though not for very long, as he had other things to worry about. (Though whenever the amnesty proposals popped up during the remainder of Dubya's term, he would grumble once again.) Such as Hurricane Katrina demonstrating just how Dubya's tendency to cut spending and rely on cronyism had gutted necessary programs that had only a decade earlier been considered models.
Simply put, over the next two years, Muir would watch as the forces he'd seen as eternally triumphant crumbled and backslid, as the actions he'd seen as glorious successes turned to grotesque failures, as the national soundtrack turned from 'Have You Forgotten?' by Darryl Worley to 'Holiday' by Green Day. And as that happened, the tone of DbD shifted slightly. Muir became whinier, more defensive. The strip shifted from constant gloating to long stretches of Muir explaining how people were being idiots trusting their lying eyes. Major issues and disappointments were either sidestepped and minimized, like Katrina, or saw Muir actively gaslighting on the matter, such as, well, what was happening in Iraq. Still, Muir was clearly operating from the assumption this was all just temporary disturbances, and that nothing would really change. Which at least partially explains the next character who'd be joining the cast. But this atmosphere was going to hang around for the rest of the Mystery Business (tm) Era, and even into the start of the Transition Era.
Get used to it, and frankly enjoy it while it's here, because what would follow would be worse.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere.
And we get the usual 'All socialism is totalitarian communism' bullshit, the 'Democrats have always been communists' bullshit, the 'Muir appropriating a piece of pop culture he misunderstands' bullshit, and the 'Muir dreaming about a civil war because he thinks it can only result in his sort smashing inferior leftist heads' bullshit. All pretty typical. Still, we do get an interesting variation of Muir almost certainly regurgitating someone else's bile and not realizing the implications.
Coming out against the 1848 revolutions in the 21st century. Well, we all knew Muir was turning on actual democracy and leaning towards monarchy, but it always clarifies things when he comes out and says it. Even if he doesn't realize that's what he's saying.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Mysterious Island.
It's a fascinating illustration of Muir's spiritual bankruptcy that his attempts to imitate foreigners discovering things like ranch dressing being good is this awfulness.
Also, those foreigners are largely seeing those evil Blue Cities you hate and insist are not the Real Murica, Muir. But then, consistency has never been his thing.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Roar of the Iron Horse.
It's kind of amusing to see so many strands of Muir being lazy sewn together here. We've got DEI used as a vague buzzword for stuff Muir doesn't like, the arrogant, ignorant assertion that liberalism and leftism are just bad and ruin things, they JUST do, he doesn't need to prove it, Muir swallowing a blatant obvious falsehood to explain away something shameful and thinking this proves how clever, how with it, how patriotic he is. It's such a sterling display of all the awfulness and stupidity that make him... well, him.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Pirates of the High Seas.
The eternal whine of Muir's cast that they are the most persecuted people EVAH.
God, it's so tiresome.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Atom Man vs. Superman.
...
I'm going to pass commenting on Muir's new favorite racist phrase and Javier fully taking his father's mantle to note that apparently that branch of the cast have gone back to Argentina once again, so yeah, Muir gave up on reintegrating them yet again.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Cody of the Pony Express.
It's grimly fascinating how much use Muir's gotten out of that single picture of two sitting hicks.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Adventures of Sir Galahad.
These drawings emphasize how her daughters--just like her sister and her mother---are pretty much just Sam with a slightly different head now.
So now that we've looked at how Jan's character, measly as it had been, was sent into a destructive tailspin by the combination of an ill-considered retcon to her ethnicity, accompanied by the sudden transformation of her background to being ultra-wealthy, and a somehow even more ill-considered relationship with Damon, it's time to move on. Because as significant as all that was, it was small beer next what would wind up the most significant retcon in DbD history, the one which changed Zed and Sam from mere members of an ensemble into the strip's de facto protagonists.
Early in 2005, Zed and Sam went on a date. They were randomly mugged by a knife-wielding thug, as happens in fiction, and most especially conservative fiction, and Zed drew a gun on the mugger, followed, of course, by Sam also drawing a gun. What followed was the stereotypical 'good guy with a gun' story, with Sam and Zed reveling in their mighty power. This moment has been called by others the birth of the new Zed, the figure I like to call 'Captain Mitty'. However, I argue that would actually come later. This was more the moment when the embryonic form of that character, who'd lurked around the edges of Zed in his schlub days, became sharply defined. Captain Mitty would be truly born nearly a year later.
That event would occur in a later mini-storyline, Zed, Sam, Damon and Jan go out to practice their shooting, and Sam notes that the various military guys are saluting Zed. Zed burbles out an explanation, Sam notes that Zed has scars on his back, Zed burbles out more explanation, and in aside panel, two of the military guys reveal that Zed is a former special ops sniper.
And just like that... we had Captain Mitty, Zed not as a dopey aging office worker, but as a patriotic deadly badass. And because she was ultimately defined by her relationship with Zed, Sam would change too, to become the worthy helpmate of this vir maximus. Indeed, we see some of it in that first story I mentioned, where Sam, in that mugging, drew her gun as quickly as Zed did. The woman who'd been defined as Zed's counterpart as a snarky, aging urban professional was going to become, well, his counterpart in a very different way.
Now, this is the start of Zed and Sam's becoming figures of more or less total wish fulfillment, not the end, so we will be talking about this more in the future, especially once we hit the Transition Era. But what we need to shift to in the next installment is how the changing politics of the world changed the tone of DbD in very subtle ways.
At first.
