...Definitely Begging Bowl Time.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Batman.

I reiterate, such... wholesome family values.

Their Motto Is "Always Be Teasing And Titillating."

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Valley of Vanishing Men.

Such wholesome family values.

The Mystery Business(TM) Era; Part 10: Muir Diversifies The Cast Through Retcons.

The tiny central cast of DbD of the Early Mystery Business(TM) Period were three white people and one Black guy. Then, very early in the Late Period, this suddenly became one white man, one Black guy, one Hispanic woman, and one Eurasian woman who also would sometimes be treated as fully Asian when that advanced whatever racist point Muir wanted to make in a strip.

And all without changing a single member of the cast.

Muir's decision to simply make it so that Jan and Sam were Hispanic and Eurasian respectively was... well, sloppy as hell, a pair of hamfisted retcons that just... happened. Now, Sam's, which happened quite a bit later, was shockingly quick and thoughtless, occurring in a strip that was insisting Democrats were the real racists, and also featured Damon in blackface. It was likely done partially for the joke, partially so that Muir could say his strip had an Asian in it, and partially so that Sam could fulfill two, count 'em two, sexual fetishes for her creator at once. (Zed even stresses that Sam is Irish-Japanese, which given what we've seen... yeah.)

But Jan's... well, Jan's would be complicated. It is fascinating to stare at Jan as she is presented now--dark-skinned, with long, straight black hair, and compare her to her original form--a very white woman with curly brown hair who almost always wore glasses. While Jan's ultimately dramatic change in appearance would happen, it would take some time. She would look the same throughout the entire Mystery Business(TM) Era. Indeed, only a month or two after the strip where she was revealed to be Hispanic, Jan would be back to acting as a Clueless White Girl in response to another Hispanic, her change ethnicity apparently requiring a little while to... take in universe.

Of course, this revelation had also involved the introduction of a reoccurring supporting cast member who continues to stick around DbD to this day--Jan's father, Don Portago, whom I like to call El Dorado Dad for his tendency to talk like El Dorado in Superfriends, speaking perfect or near-perfect English sprinkled with gratuitous Spanish so we all know he's foreign. El Dorado Dad would, believe it or not, have a significant effect on the strip despite not appearing that often, but that's something to talk about later. For now, what we really need to focus on is how this completely undermined Jan as a character.

Because that is what happened here, something I noted when I first reviewed that strip years ago. Jan wasn't a good character when she was a Clueless Liberal White Girl, but she at least made some sort of sense for the story Muir wanted to tell. Damon is the Black Conservative, Jan is the Clueless Liberal White Girl who keeps telling him he's being Black wrong, in essence, underlining her hypocrisy. Jan says she's fighting against privilege and the status quo but in truth she's mostly just reinforcing it. And that all changes the moment you make her a minority.

Or rather it should. Because of course, Muir hasn't really made Jan Hispanic. Much like Damon, who is completely isolated from the culture of Black America, Jan has no real ties to Hispanic culture. She will start, by degrees, to indulge in a watered down version of the character tics her father uses to show that he's foreign, occasionally speaking in Spanish, but that's it. She has no membership in left or liberal Hispanic groups--Damon will insult those groups to her face, and she will usually say nothing. She makes no comment on the hardships of being Hispanic. The cultural world she lives in is the same white Americana that the rest of the cast does. It is, once again, Muir imagining ethnicity in characters as nothing more than ticking a box.

Now, this would be both a fatal undermining and inept treatment of the character on its own. But of course... Muir would make it worse.

Who Is Even Talking In The First Panel?

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Secret Code.

Ahh, yes, the Muir Standard--a declaration of Left Wing principles can ONLY be the pretext for corrupt betrayal based on... whatever the hell idiocy's he's reading at the moment, distorted further by his warped mind. It's made him the self-declared champion of the common man who champions the common man taking it in the neck, and a so-called enemy of corruption who has to come up with elaborate conspiracy theories to explain how his heroes only look like they're corrupt.

And he never learns, and he never changes.

Well, That Was Astonishingly Awful.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Perils of the Royal Mounted.

If I weren't sure that Ian was ultimately hivemind white trash scum, I'd advise him to run right now.

Uggh! MANLY!!!

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Captain Midnight.

Ahh, yes. More of the toxic masculinity that Muir thinks is admirable.

Sure. Sure. This isn't pathetic at all. Nope.

...It's A Look.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Holt of the Secret Service.

I know I keep saying it, but these days Muir's dream life is so pathetic and repulsive when you get down to it.

Attack Of The Redneck Grub People.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Iron Claw.

You know, this strip would be terrible even if it didn't feature a distorted Mari holding what looks like some mutant little person who is clearly supposed to be one of the strip's interchangeable horde of babies in the last panel.

Sam's Gonna Strangle Her With That Umbilical Cord, I See.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Spider Returns.

As we look at Muir treat dysfunctional emotional manipulation with a mawkish sentimentality that suggests that this is how family relations should be in his mind, I should note that the homeschooled education that the Compound dwellers insist is so better than the outside world's degenerate offerings has left Mari thinking that the Yucatan is in South America.

It isn't.

A Reminder That They Just Have Terminators On This Ranch. They Just... Do.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because White Eagle.

As we stare at that supremely awkward strip, I do worry that if this trip does happen, and Muir allows it to happen onscreen, we will get his racist-ass upside down version of Mexico.

The Mystery Business(TM) Era; Part 9: The First Period Shift.

 There are other things to talk about, but as they really cover the entire Mystery Business(TM) Era, we'll keep them for later. For now, it's time to talk about the swift transition from the Early Period to the Late Period. 

Now, the actual division between the two isn't very dramatic. As opposed to some of the Transition Era Periods, which start with a new storyline or plot element flaring up, the change is--within the strip--quiet at first. Damon rings in the New Year gloating about the upcoming death of print media.

Meanwhile, Muir's little strip was beginning its nearly three year run in syndication.

In retrospect, it's quite clear that Muir had always seen DbD as a potential strip for actual publication. He had, in fact, done some work in newspaper comics, producing one of the typical single-panel local Far Side variants of the Nineties and Double-Aughts for a Florida paper. But this wasn't the pathway for anything bigger. Producing the next "Conservative Doonesbury attempt" was. And more importantly, Muir wanted to do this.

Looking at it this way, it's hard not to think that DbD's initial "office comedy" setup was part of making the strip broadly appealing to potential publishers. Aside from this era being something of a peak for the genre in the comics, an office workplace was also a very popular setting for early webcomics, which frequently aimed at being content an office worker could scroll over in their downtime. Muir was likely, in essence, trying to fill the traditional niches.

Now, to be clear I'm not saying the Mystery Business(TM) setting was simply cynical pandering on Muir's part--I've no doubt he imagined he had tons of things to say about office work. (He was of course, simply wrong about this, something we will explore again in time.) But I don't think it was an idea that deeply excited him. It seems pretty clear to me that if he had chosen to set DbD up as the strip he most wanted to write, it would have been very different from the strip he created. Still, from his initial perspective, the plan worked. DbD wound up syndicated. Not widely--it was only in four papers at its peak--but syndicated.

Now, the Late Period would see a lot of dramatic changes within the strip, and many of them seem to have been triggered by multiple factors. Figuring out which ones were most influenced by syndication can be hard. That said, it's very likely that it provided the initial impetus for moving towards a more regular publishing schedule. The Early Period had, as I've noted before, clearly been something of a hobby. Muir took sizable breaks in both 2003 and 2004--indeed, 2004's (caused by family health issues) was an over two-month hiatus that saw him missing the actual Presidential election entirely. That's not something a work trying to be important political commentary does. The Late Period saw him working a more regular schedule, at least until the troubled year of 2007 where it all sort of fell apart. (Again, that's something we'll go into more detail about later.) It would also see the emergence of DbD's Full Sundays, something that would outlast syndication--previously Muir's Sundays were the same size as the weeklies--though that wouldn't happen immediately, and... well, there were some wrinkles that once again, we'll talk about later.

Right after we deal with a bunch of character retcons, and the changing political environment, 'cause oh, boy were things gonna get crazy.

How Dare The Fascists Turn On The Nazis!

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Green Archer.

I'm torn between the delight of watching Muir sporadically attack Trump and Company in his latest Purity Spiral, the quiet horror that it's because he's achieved a new level of Actual Nazi, and the sad amusement was that was what it took for him to realize that, no actually Israel's government is kind of awful and a terrible ally. 

Complicated feelings for such an awful strip.

The 'Accusation As Confession' Has Peaked.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Deadwood Dick.

... 

He pulls this one as Trump tries to set up a slush fund and ban the IRS from looking into his family funds, and oh, yes, has the entire war with Iran going on.

...

Ugh.

This Has To Be True! He So Wants It To Be!

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Terry and the Pirates.

Remember when Muir was screaming that prosecuting people who committed actual crimes was evil and oppressive?

Projecting as usual, the fascist filth.

Of course in the real world, the Trump DoJ has proven useless at doing anything but settling with... yep, Trump. But Muir knows they have to be just... waiting, and soon they'll unleash legal fury against the Democrats and their Evil Conspiracy of Evil.

Captain Mitty IS The Paterfamilias!

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Shadow.

Of course, Zed could only be one inch shorter than a potential son-in-law. Of course.

Muir Once Again Whimpers For The Poor White Man (So Oppressed, So Mistreated).

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Overland With Kit Carson.

It's kind of funny how nakedly pathetic Muir's gotten over the last year or so. 

I mean, it's still fundamentally awful, because he's a fucking white supremacist now, but he's just sad and whiny about it most of the time.

He Thinks This Is Heartwarming.

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Mandrake the Magician.

I reiterate how repulsive the twins have become, and add that what vague signs of personality Mari's lumpish beau is showing suggest that he's a perfect recruit for their little hate group.

I Am Underwhelmed.

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Flying G-Men.

So that's Ian, eh?

From Solomon Grundy to frickin' Rorschach. The Owens sisters have a type. Ugh.

The Mystery Business(TM) Era; Part 8: When Muir Loved Dubya.

 The political world of the Mystery Business(TM) Era, especially the Early Period, is quite unique for the strip. Where the story of Day by Day has been steadily ratcheting paranoia, racism and delusion since the election of Obama, this point in time isn't like that. Oh, there's racism and a LOT of delusion, but it tends to lurk in the corners and under surface, so to speak.

No, what's clearest about this time is how much more confident and content Muir is. It's not that his base politics are any less vile. He's still racist, still misogynistic, still authoritarian. But seeing yourself on the clearly winning side, with your opponents locked out forever makes him somewhat mellow. Total victory is almost assuredly at hand, so yeah, you just have to wait, and they'll either see that you're right, or be irrelevant nobodies forever on the margins. And that sense of assurance can give Muir a deceptive appearance of acceptance. He's a reactionary asshole through and through--he will demonstrate this constantly--but he hasn't gone down as many crazy rabbit holes as he will later. A Muir who thinks feminism is dying is a sexist Muir who isn't calling for the end to female suffrage. A Muir who thinks that Blacks are starting to accept a proper American viewpoint is a racist Muir who isn't a naked white supremacist. And a Muir who thinks the nation understands what needs to be done and that the right people will be in charge to do this forevermore is an authoritarian Muir who isn't an outright fascist calling for either dictatorship or a coup against the leftist pretenders who think daring to, ha, win an election means something. He's rotten at the core of him, but there's so much less of that core showing, being rubbed raw by exposure  to the world. 

And that's the essential essence of Mystery Business(TM) Era DbD, especially in the Early Period. This is a Muir who thinks that he's won. That Bill Clinton has been demonstrated to be a fluke. That the story's finished, and all he has to do is ride along and laugh at those losers who dared to oppose he and his. It's a sense that will not last--it will in fact be starting to crack up by the tail end of the Mystery Business(TM) Era. And once it's gone, it is gone forever. Muir will never get it back, least of all because he'll start demanding impossible things from the people he imagines can restore it for it.

But what does this mean? Well, in the political scene outside the cozy offices of Mystery Business(TM), we generally focus on three things, two domestic, and one foreign. Domestically we have on one side, Dubya, and his advisors, presented as a bunch of wily, capable statesmen, and on the other, the Democrats, a pathetic, crooked ineffectual opposition laboring under the delusion they can somehow beat Dubya.  The depictions of Dubya will seem eerily familiar to those used to Muir's depiction of the Trump presidency--a Republican president widely seen as being thick is portrayed as an extremely capable and canny political operator with the common touch. The Democrats, on the other hand, are a lot more farcical than their latter day Evil Conspiracy of Evil iteration. Muir may view them as crooks, but petty crooks, running ineffectual schemes as the inevitable Permanent Republican Majority grinds them to dust.

In foreign policy we largely focus on the forces of terrorism, uniformly brown-skinned and Muslim, who are just as hapless as the Democrats, but also much eviler. The buildup to and fighting of the war in Iraq takes the same tone, with foreign nations and international organizations who object being likewise painted as ineffectual and corrupt. This opposition will also produce portraits of an anti-war Left as a barely-differentiated mass of latter day hippies for Muir to scorn and metaphorically punch. This will produce an actual character in time, but for now, they exist to be a counterpart of Muir's Liberal Character Who Is Always Wrong, these being somehow More Wrong. 

This the political world of DbD in this time period. One side holds all the power, and is always right. Muir may object to a few individual Republicans, such as Trent Lott and John McCain, but by and large, he is blithely supportive of the GOP and especially the Dubya Administration. He is absolutely convinced of their power and popularity, and just as certain that nothing they can do will ever end it.

This will have very notable effects in the future.

Desperately Restarting A Defunct Plotline.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Spider's Web.

And as we wonder if this time around we're finally going to see Ian's face, I just want to say what thoroughly revolting characters the twins have turned into, a pair of whiny, entitled bigots who put a front of bold superiority to cover being a pair of cowards who fear anything different or new, and blame everyone else for the obvious results of this. They're good proof of Raylan Givens' famous maxim (which I am freely paraphrasing)--"If you run into an asshole now and then, well, that's life. If everybody you run into is an asshole--no, you're the asshole." They're young women with the soul of a cantankerous old man.

'Cause, yeah, that's what they are.

The Only Reason He Isn't Saying 'Kinder, Kuche, Kirche' Is Because It's In German.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok.

There's something so unbelievably sad about Muir's pretend family, while also being grotesque and disgusting. 

POSTSCRIPT--And three days after starting early, Muir drives his latest fund drive into a tree. 

So, Does He Like Rubio, Or Does He Not Like Rubio?

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Secret of Treasure Island.

Rubio these days reminds of that famous bit in A Man for All Seasons, where More comments to Richard Rich, the man who's perjured himself to help destroy More for a fairly insubstantial reward, that he could at least understand a man selling his soul for the world, but selling it for Wales baffles him. The man's given up every scrap of dignity he had--which to be fair was not much--to be Trump's gofer.

And when it is done, he will watch the cult that he's doing it for splinter into pieces, while those like him find themselves likely paying a greater price than the fool they've done it all for.

The Astonishing Thing Is Muir Thinks She's MORE Likable Now.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Mysterious Pilot.

"Also, I was created by a creepy cartoonist who started wanting to hatefuck me, so he just changed my politics to turn me into someone he'd find less objectionable."

And The Begging Bowl Appears Early.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Jungle Menace.

As we see Muir doing the usual bit where he insists that he and his are somehow the bold rebels despite literally holding power at the moment, and applauding things like the VRA getting gutted because anything that balances the scales has to be an evil, corrupt conspiracy against the natural order of dumb white guys feeling like they're better off, let's note the begging bowl.

Two weeks before it came out last year--where it came out early. Of course, it also made an even earlier appearance last year, and then vanished to come out a bit later, so let's see how it goes.

He Insists All Is Well While Curling Up Into A Ball And Crying...

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

Remember what I said yesterday?

Because if anything, this is worse. Muir is desperately putting his hope that some grand plan, some cagey scheme is going on and soon, SOON, the Democratic Party shall pay! What is it? He doesn't know. But something has to happen, because otherwise, things are looking very grim for his side.

"Th-They Are All Fuh-Fuh-Filthy Puh-Puh-Pedos...."

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Clutching Hand.

Man. As vile and morally bankrupt as all this is, it's also just so pathetic. This is Muir crashing out in real time, staring at a reality that looks very bad for him, shutting his eyes, and desperately trying to insist that it is something else entirely. The last time I saw him this bad was way back in 2020 when he was trying to convince himself that no, no, Biden hadn't won, it was all a trick, all a trick, Trump was going to throw all the Democrats in prison any day now.

It's gonna be a crazy year, folks.

The Mystery Business(TM) Era; Part 7: The Four Man Band Plays On.

 And so we have laid out the central cast, who are going to drive the action for the next decade or so, with only two significant characters joining during this period. This doubtless seems like a small cast, because, well, it is. But in truth it's even worse. As noted, Zed and Sam largely function as one character, and Damon is essentially just a riff on those same basic character traits. And so the strip at this point often feels like three almost identical jackasses against their dimwitted liberal foil. Zed, Sam and Damon spend most of their time whining or smugly demonstrating their own swollen egos. Jan falls into what I like to term the 'Elmer Fudd Problem'; much like Elmer Fudd, she's an obvious patsy who is only there to fail. Fudd only works, so much as he does, because Bugs Bunny is likable and witty, and Fudd at least has some theoretical power over him, even if he's completely incompetent at using it. And you see the problem here--Zed, Sam and Damon are neither of those things despite supposing to be, and while Jan is sometimes drawn as having some vague sort of authority over the others, it's never laid out, or used to create a story. Most of the time, she's simply a peer who is always wrong.

Indeed, looking at the cast dynamics, it's astonishing how they lack any real internal conflict. Zed, Sam and Damon all largely agree and get along. They have the occasional petty squabble and prank, but nothing seems to dent the group's camaraderie. Damon shows an initial interest in Sam that could clearly fuel a storyline--but it's discarded in a few strips, and from that point onwards, even when they are not officially in  a relationship, Sam and Zed are in a relationship. And with that, all the cast has is grumbling and whining how stupid other people are, complaining about petty annoyances, and in essence, being awful, while the narrative supports them.

Because that's the real problem here. There's nothing wrong, in a comedy, with having your cast be awful so long as you, the writer, understand they are awful. Seinfeld... Curb Your Enthusiasm... It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia...  hell, The Three Stooges all work with the understanding that the central characters are fundamentally miserable people and the authors of most of their own misfortune. But that's not what happens here. Muir depicts whiny, privileged jackasses and imagines that they are put-upon everymen. The closest thing to an actual plotline with conflict is the Damon-Jan "will they/won't they?" tango, and that is clumsily handled, unappealing, and fairly intermittent at this stage of the strip. On some level, Damon and Jan are treated as a potential couple because Sam and Zed are a couple, and Muir had two characters of what he viewed as the appropriate genders left over, and no ability to realize that, actually, pairing these characters up would be a bad idea. And that is it. The strip involves the interactions of three deeply unpleasant people who all vibe with one another, a fourth unpleasant character they all mildly clash with, and that's the emotional core of the strip. To a very limited amount of emotion.

Now, I plan on looking on the political side of the strip in the next installment, but as it touches everything, I'll have to deal with it here too. And once again, we find the same problem... there's only one real opinion in the group. Damon is supposed to be the "Conservative", and Sam and Zed are supposed to be fairly apolitical moderates... but Muir drops that fairly early. Sam and Zed wind up having virtually the same opinion as Damon, while simply holding them a bit less stridently at this point in time. Any disagreements aren't actual disagreements, they are simply variations in degree. The only person offering a different viewpoint is Jan, and she holds comical distortions of the opinions of Muir's opponents that she expresses ineptly. That the rest of the cast regularly fails to rebut them is more down to Muir's intellectual poverty than anything else.

And that's a big problem right there. Muir's cast doesn't work right from the get-go for any of the things he wants to use it for. And, well, it's only going to get worse.

"C-Can't Y-You S-See W-What A-Animals Th-They A-Are?"

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Custer's Last Stand.

This legion of misquotes and bullshit are pretty rich coming from a guy who's trafficked in worse, and whined and screamed persecution at even the faintest hint of being called on it. But it also underlines what a gutless wonder Muir is under it all. He's like the people who, to paraphrase the quote, waged war on the naive belief that they would bomb everyone and no one would bomb them.

And I don't think I need to tell you how that went for them.

Muir Blubbers About Things That Didn't Happen.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Police Reporter.

Ahh, yes. Muir uses the fictional event he wrote, thus controlling every aspect of it to segue into a nonsense conspiracy claim and then to whine about how the Dems are being so mean to Trump.

When you look at it carefully, you realize this is a defensive squat trying to pretend to be a gallant charge.

Join The Owens Twins As They Re-Enact Scenes From 'Taxi Driver'...

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Mysterious Airman.

And another return to Teeter, the city with the politics of Austin and the geographic position of El Paso. Now, ultimately, all the racist swill, hatred of cities and screaming at inferior leftists is, well, potboiler Muir bullshit at this point. (It's interesting that Kiko can somehow just identify random Hispanic men on the streets of a freaking border city as illegal immigrants, but this fascist fantasy, so what do you expect?) No, I'm gonna to focus on a more interesting question. Now, Teeter is supposedly a college town. 

So, what's the college called? Is it 'UTTeeter'? 'UTT'? Just 'Teeter'? Or is it a private university with religious ties? You know what? As I'm doing this as a joke, I'll make it the last one. Teeter's college is a Catholic university, originally founded by Jesuits in the 1920s, and is known as the University of Saint Jesus Malverde de Sinola, or JMS for short. And that is what I'm going to use in all future jokes I tell about Muir's ridiculous little imaginary city.

Two Days In A Row Of Voiceover Panels. Is The Cast On Vacation?

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Perils of the Jungle.

Muir doesn't know much about Muslims, but he knows they don't like pigs, and so we continue to be subjected to these endless racist jokes about beating them using pork.

He Dares Consider Anything To Stop Sacred Gun Violence!

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Adventures of Tarzan.

Muir's always been prone to grumble whenever Trump's shown any openness to gun control. But the grumbling seems a bit nastier these days, and his faith in the man much much shoddier.

"Say, What If We Set The Boat On Fire? Like The Vikings Did?"

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because King of the Carnival.

At this point, I'm pretty sure Muir watched The Prisoner recently, and he's fallen in love with it for all the wrong reasons. Which has lead to this strip, a particularly dark shout-out to a fan. Instead of having his virtual self getting to gawk at the cast, Frank Manning gets to discuss potential crimes against humanity with them. 

Joy.

A Reboot That REALLY Isn't Needed...

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Panther Girl of the Kongo.

Muir does realize that the Village were the bad guys and Number Six was the good guy, right?

Or does he imagine that the situation would be different if his people were doing it to no good inferior leftists?

The Mystery Business(TM) Era; Part 6: The Liberal Stooge.

 And now we wrap up that little cast with the other primarily political character, Jan, who, in the Early Period, sits in a strange relation with her fellows. For a start, Sam, Zed and Damon all have jobs in Mystery Business(TM)'s technical areas--even though it should be noted Damon's isn't ever named in strip, but still, that he is involved in that is made reasonably clear. Jan however, is in Marketing, something that she will yammer about in place of a personality trait well after Mystery Business(TM) is shuttered. This puts a clear line between her and the rest--they all do something tangible in... whatever it is Mystery Business(TM) does, while Jan... well, theoretically, she's supposed to be helping to sell it, though I'm not sure Muir gets that. But more importantly, she's doing something abstract that Muir clearly sees as meaningless busy work. Indeed, Jan's exact position in Mystery Business(TM) is somehow more nebulous than Damon's unnamed one--frequently, she's depicted as holding some level of authority over the others, to allow her to perform the beats a "boss" character would. This makes no sense, but so it goes. All of it is ultimately about setting Jan up for her purpose in the political portion of the strip--being the lone "liberal" member of the cast.

Jan's general purpose at this point in the strip is to be a comic straight man, and a very specific sort of one. She's not an occasionally witty voice of sanity observing and commenting on the lunacy surrounding her. She's a stooge. Jan says stupid things and asks stupid questions so the others can riff of her. You don't laugh with this Jan, you laugh at her. Early Period Jan is a pill. At her best, she's sheltered and naive, the perfect gull who still confident she is so much smarter than you. At her worst, she is shallow and self-righteous, constantly demanding attention and validation.  Hence the job that Muir largely paints as useless and also manipulative. Everything about Jan at this point is supposed to underline her status as someone who's the butt of the joke, and just wrong.

Now, Muir does not do a good job of this. A problem that has been with him from the start is that his own opinions are, well, shallow and ill-considered, so to a reader not predisposed to simply nod along, Jan doesn't come across an idiot arguing with sensible people, she comes across as an idiot arguing with worse idiots. Jan is portrayed not as some well-reasoned statement against liberalism, but as a caricature of and snarl against "Vaguely Leftish Coffee-house Types Who The Writer Resents", She is, to Muir, a Spoiled Well-to-Do White Girl, talking about things she doesn't understand.

Now this will change in the future. Indeed, this version of Jan will be largely discarded not only in future Eras, but over the course of the Late Mystery Business(TM) Period. But at this point, she tends to stay in her lane. Jan's job is to be zinged off of, and zinged off she is.

With very bad zingers.

Sam And Zed Continue To Be Awful Nazi Hicks.

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Man With the Steel Whip.

It's kind of amazing how this imagined "Muslim community" on the Texas border just keeps popping back up every few months because Muir so loves giving his cast punching bags that he's having this one spontaneously regenerate over and over again so Sam can complain about or destroy it again.