So, Yesterday's Comic Again.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Desperadoes of the West.

So more of the twins failing to be real girls while shrieking about how Democrats are unmanly, and also the font of all evil, and also evil race-traitors.

Low effort. Low, low effort.

Even Female Hivemind Members Share In The Toxic Masculinity.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Invisible Monster.

It says something that the strange little look at the byzantine way Muir handles patron requests is more interesting than the strip, which is the usual smug posturing from this hollow little void of a man.

They're In Full Hybrid 30s Moppet/Hick Mode Right Now.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Radar Patrol vs. Sky King.

Once again, it's astonishing not only how ignorant Muir is of what he's talking about, but how arrogant he is in his convictions on it.

There's also something darkly humorous in an aging man in Florida who's convinced--just convinced--that land that mostly went unclaimed for two centuries just needs to be put up for sale and, MAN, the frontier would be back! It's very much the sort of thinking that got us Cap'n Mitty, champion of Murica.

Just So Much... Ugh.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The James Brothers of Missouri.

...

...

There's a voice in my mind going 'And into this strip, the Dork Lord poured all his misogyny, all his lust, and all his simultaneous hatred of and abasement before wealth and power.'

It sounds like Cate Blanchett, so that's cool.

The Mystery Business(TM) Era; Part 4: Essentially, One Character.

 And so now, we reach a look at the cast, and as I have mentioned it is a very small, downright rudimentary one at this point. Over the next few years, the cast will largely remain fixed at four regulars, finally moving up to five for reasons that are actually quite simple (and will be explored later). There will be only a handful of supporting characters introduced, two of whom are parents of the regulars. (They're also some of the only ones to persist.) As I noted previously, Muir's strip has a very threadbare feel, in its earliest stages.

And with those first two characters introduced, we hit a fascinating wrinkle, because those two characters are, as the title of this post indicates, essentially one character. Sam and Zed begin the comic figuratively joined at the hip, and so they stay, frequently becoming literally so in many future strips. Right from the start, the pair's most common use are strips where they bounce the same point of view back at one another. It is downright uncanny.

It's not that Muir doesn't give them what are largely superficial differences. Zed is in 'design', and Sam is an 'engineer'--implicitly a technical engineer. But while Sam liking to fiddle with machines is going to remain a source of gags, in truth, their jobs are barely going to be touched on. Gender is the biggest one, but again, Muir just uses this for shallow, sexist gags and of course, to have Zed and Sam get in a relationship. Perhaps the most significant difference takes its cue from the famous line of As Good As It Gets (which we know Muir watched and knows, because he will reference this very line in a future cartoon)--"I think of a man, then I take away reason and accountability." Sam is Zed with much less of a filter and more of a tendency to fly off the handle, an embodied Id who gets to perform most of the joint character's worst impulses. But again, this isn't as profound a difference as it sounds--it frequently does feel that Sam is 'Zed if he was a woman who just did the things he thinks about doing'.

Now, another aspect of Zed and Sam's role in the strip in the early days is that they are clearly supposed to largely focus on the apolitical side of things, which can come as a surprise to readers used to their present role as embodiments of the proud redneck volk that are the nation's rightful masters. At this point in the strip, they generally focus on slice of life strips, and their time is most often spent complaining about their jobs, and whining about getting old. These are probably the most human characters have been in DbD, and even here one shouldn't overstate things. Muir's strips on these subjects are for the most part cliched, repetitive, and irritating, and often just as sloppily executed as the political strips. But still, at this point, Zed and Sam are meant to be mortals, schlubs, an average Joe, and the somewhat above-average Jill that has taken a shine to the former. That's not going to last.

Oh, is it not going to last.

Who Else Feels A Need To Wash?

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because King of the Rocket Men.

Sometimes Muir making every character 'Muir in different hats' goes in real creepy directions.

Musk Returns To Undead Werehyena Form.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Ghost of Zorro.

Character shilling and Musk boosting.

That's it. 

That's the strip. It's kind of sad, really.

Muir Announces That Elon Is Once Again Of The Body!

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Federal Agents vs. Underworld, Inc.

...

I'm sorry, it's just in addition to the hypocrisy, we've got Muir portraying Elon Musk as possessing both moral fiber and disgust with Epstein, neither of which are true. (A reminder that, just like Il Puce, Muskrat was far closer to Epstein than the people Muir likes to imagine were his besties.)

"Truly A Brilliant Strategy, Sir!"

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Adventures of Frank and Jesse James.

Muir once again looking at stupid actions that will hurt us and going "Wow, this is brilliant!" Because, once again, like Trump, he doesn't understand the concepts of soft power and reciprocity and views anything in that direction as a sign of weakness.

And then is left baffled when isolating the nation in the political sphere makes things worse. 

"Next Question, How Do You Maintain Your Lustrous Head Of Hair?"

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Dangers of the Canadian Mounted.

As amusing as Muir treating these delusional softballs as "the real journalism that people should be doing" this is all the fairly typical phenomena of a person who has found themselves doubting their faith attempting to double down on it to make the questions go away.

It rarely works.

See, It's Okay, Because She's Virtual...

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because G-Men Never Forget.

Ahh, yes, Muir doing the bit where he mixes being sleazy with being self-righteous. Never gets old.

Ahh, The Bit Where Muir Reminds People Of Much Better Works.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Black Widow.

This sort of underlines the problem with this storyline--the cast's incredible plot coupons aren't working thanks to author fiat, yes. But they shouldn't need them to begin with, as Trump has been portrayed as friendly to them, taking calls from and even calling them on occasion. The reason that's gone dark is the same reason Jo won't tell her what her powers revealed--they're both Muir's little power fantasy, and right now, that fantasy has been punctured. He thought he had a president who was his sort, and now he's vaguely realizing that he might not, and so Zed and Sam are suddenly written as being cut off from Trump instead of having a direct line to him.

The Mystery Business(TM) Era; Part 3; Setting the Stage

Day by Day opens with the simplest setup imaginable. Indeed, it is so simple, it's barely a setup at all. Characters are shown, introduce each other to one another, and give their job titles. For the first strip, a weak joke about their jobs is given. For the next, we get a weak effort at political humor. That's it.

As I've noted many times, there's a certain threadbare quality to all this. Muir is putting up the minimum effort in his setup, and the result is a fictional universe that feels like it only just started up when we came in. Of course, that's true of the start of any fictional universe, but a good artist can hide the joins so to speak. Muir doesn't even bother. We start with characters all just meeting, even though it's heavily implied they've all worked at this place for awhile. Even worse, Mystery Business(tm) is clearly not a large firm, and Muir's laser focus on the central cast makes it seem even smaller. And so, we get people who clearly should have bumped into each other before now... just bumping into each other, with no real sense of other people who could have served as insulation. We do not get many strips with unseen coworkers being griped about or briefly appearing coworkers to add a sense of scale. Mystery Business(tm) seems initially to consist of just these four characters, and while Muir will briefly gesture at there being other people there, it will never be for very long. Only two coworkers who aren't main staff will be named, and neither will be given much focus. (Though one will rank a nasty off-screen death that will be mentioned years later.)

Now, part of this is there's a sense that DbD at this stage is as much the strip Muir thinks he should be writing at this point in time as it is the strip he wants to write, and these values are going to jostle each other quite a bit in these early years. But there's a fundamental shoddiness that Muir is never going to outgrow. 

Muir Reiterates He Still Believes In Big Orange Brother. Trust Him, Bro.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Jesse James Rides Again.

It says something that Muir's statement of faith is something that Trump is definitely lying about.

Muir Insists Up Is Now Down, And Always Has Been.

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Son of Zorro.

Interesting bit. Even though I commented on how Muir was quietly reiterating that he is true-true for now last time, I have to note that Jo/Trump's list of "accomplishments" aren't quite the same this time. I suspect most of this is the developing situation--Muir is as eager to declare victory as Trump, but much less able to--and some is Muir's developing oddities.

Watching Muir Decide Just What Brand Of Crazy He Is.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Crimson Ghost.

Through an incredible coincidence, I actually know the online conspiracy theory Muir's referencing, the infamous "Short Trump" theory, and it suggests he's breaking with the likes of Teddy Beale for a little while at least. But as he is still swimming in the waters of other crazy conspiracy theories and shouting that up is down and defeat is victory, who knows how long before he changes his mind on that.

Again, if there's one thing Muir's proven while insisting just the opposite, it's that he's one pliable, gullible man.

POSTSCRIPT--What I assume was tomorrow's strip originally went online at the same time in what was a very confusing manner. The malfunctions keep piling up.

All America Needs Is A Magitech-Creating Whiz Kid!

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Daughter of Don Q.

I swear, this is like how in Atlas Shrugged, Galt's Gulch works because somehow, they've invented stuff that breaks Newton's First Law.

Muir Listens To The Sage-Like Discourse Of Whiskey Pete.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because King of the Forest Rangers.

There's something grotesque about watching Muir recast Kegsbreath as his idea of a sophisticated military thinker, especially as that idea isn't actually that, but a bad parody of it, spouting ideas Muir's gotten second or third hand while failing to understand.

That  it includes Muir's typical "Inferior Blue States! They are not true Murican!" drivel just makes it worse.

His Imaginary Self Talking To His Imaginary Version Of The President Will Ease His Mind About What's Real.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Phantom Rider.

Man, at the bottom of it all, this is just sad.

I mean, there's a lot of clutter here. We see Muir celebrating the Trump Administration's elevation of crudity and sexism, him talking about how look how him attacking Federal agencies and alliances is good, great, so amazing. Because he's locked himself in a hermetic bubble and thinks this drivel is patriotism. But the doubts are still there, and have if anything grown worse. Note that they've spread from Sam, who remember as his feminized Id is supposed to be saying things that his toxic masculinity sees as too emotional, to Zed, his idealized self, the version who is supposed to be him as he wishes was. He's supposed to feel that it's worth staying the course.

And so we get this strip of Zed talking about how he needs reality to see through the fake things online.

Ignoring that he and this strip are... fake things online.

Going To A High Society Soiree With The President, As One Does.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Purple Monster Strikes.

Ahh, Muir's cast is going to have a chat with the imaginary version of Trump they're sort of friends with. I expect an epic attempt at squaring the circle.

Muir's simultaneous hatred of and longing to belong to the upper class explains so much of his character. Especially when you add in that his political stance, with its lack of any belief in economic justice, leaves him muttering how he knows that obviously, he doesn't resent their wealth, oh no, that's totally okay.

The Mystery Business(TM) Era; Part 2: The Divisions Within The Divisions

I'll start with noting that this wasn't the originally planned Part 2 of this series, but that I realized that I had another thing to define before getting into the nitty gritty. So, we've got this one, about the subdivisions of the divisions I've made.

Eras are big overarching stretches of the strip marked by common creative threads. (Even if, in the case of the Transition Era, those threads consist of 'being stuck between two clearly delineated eras' and 'watching Muir struggle to figure out what he wanted to do with the strip'.) But within the eras, there are similar divisions, story threads taken up then abandoned, style choices that come and go, obsessions and oddities that appear, then disappear. Taking a hint from geologists, these will be called periods.

Now, I expect that the future Eras are going to be quite involved, but the Mystery Business(tm) Era is a simpler beast--it divides cleanly into the Early Mystery Business(tm) Period, 2002 to 2004, and the Late Mystery Business(tm) Period, 2005 to 2007. The Early Period is both formative, and also, clearly something Muir is doing as a hobby. Both 2003 and 2004 see him take lengthy hiatuses, and even in 2002, where the strip is active for only two months, he still manages to miss a day.

The Late Period, however, marks the brief apogee of Muir's mainstream involvement. From 2005 to late in 2007, Day by Day was actually syndicated in a handful of newspapers. This saw Muir attempting a more rigorous, professional attempt to produce strips on time, and also saw some developments in the characters and politics of the strip, which will be gone into later. This syndication ended abruptly--likely of self-inflicted wounds on Muir's part--and so by the end of the Late Period, Muir was transitioning the strip back to online only.

And this brings up something connected to all this that has to be mentioned--the Mystery Business(tm) Era is the shortest by a significant margin. The only one that is presently shorter is the Gunpowder Era, and that is presently ongoing, and should outstep it during the course of this year. The Compound and Transition Eras outpace it by a year and multiple months, and even that undersells its brevity, because again, there are significant hiatuses in the Early Period comics. The foundational era of Day by Day has the least strips. I suspect there's something to this, and yes, I will go into it in the near future.

Right, Forget What We Said Earlier, This Is The Actual Brilliant Plan.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Federal Operator 99.

The Gnostic reality shifts and Muir insists this shows how clever he is, as he sneers at alliances, sneers at Congress, and imagines that this boondoggle is somehow going to be a cost-saving measure.

This is simultaneously creepy and sad.

Muir Wishes To Remind Us That He's A Racist Who Believes The Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory. And Also, In Weird, Bad Pinup Art. With Robots.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Manhunt of Mystery Island.

There's something so quietly disgusting about his characters smiling smugly as they pose naked and spout racist drivel.

Setting Up An Obvious Filthy Pun.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Zorro's Black Whip.

It says something that it's quite obvious that the only reason that he even used the word 'taint' was...

Well, to set up the labored "punchline".