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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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 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 The Vigilante.
Muir's ability to convince himself that this time his fascist dreams are gonna happen, not only AFTER countless previous disappointments, but in the middle of multiple ones AND while watching the Trump administration unravel is almost impressive, in a wretched, pathetic way.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Jack Armstrong.
You know, this is a fascinating multi-level fail right here. Aside from the 'So the California Democrats will cheat to push out a Republican Mayoral candidate, but not a Republican Gubernatorial candidate" bit, he's failing to consider that if Pratt had gotten in, he would have then had to win... the actual election.
But then, anything that let's Muir whine and scream that it isn't fair, and the other guys are cheating.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Chick Carter, Detective.
You know, there's both the chilling part of this--Muir spouts this Nazi bullshit and doesn't even realize it's Nazi bullshit, he thinks he's being a patriotic Murican--and the deeply amusing part of this--Muir imagines his little secret prison for dissidents at a time when his lumpish hero is running out of juice on nearly every front.
