It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Return of the Riddle Rider.
This is Muir's idea of a cutting and witty vengeance, a childish insult in balloon form. Even he seems to notice he's lost the plot here on some level, though I assume he will soon depict this as being SO DEVASTATING to his latest hate object, Mayor Not-Xir.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Fire Fighters.
Perfect. Now we're not only getting the standard DbD sleazy business, we're getting nostalgia for DbD sleazy businesses past.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Blake of Scotland Yard.
Ahh, yes, Muir returning to the old well of 'Let's start up a horny business'. Like the dog to its vomit, et cetera, et cetera.
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.
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.
