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 Era(tm).
With a shudder.
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