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.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Purple Riders.
There's something quite amusing about how even as Muir tries to insist how rugged and individualistic he is, it's done with whining, and complaining and bitterly insisting how unfair he's being treated by the evil forces of Leftism, while sucking up to one of his clay-footed idols, and looking to him for ideas on how to think.
So typical of our thin-skinned, brittle-boned aspiring ubermensch.
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.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Secret Kingdom.
Here we get another example of Muir thinking a display of his ignorance is a display of knowledge, and a display of his pathologies is a display of artistic vision.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Fates and Flora Fourflush.
The fascinating thing is this demonstrates not only Muir's delusional, racist, sexist misunderstanding of the present, but his equally delusional, racist, sexist misunderstanding of the past.
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 Roar of the Iron Horse.
It's kind of amusing to see so many strands of Muir being lazy sewn together here. We've got DEI used as a vague buzzword for stuff Muir doesn't like, the arrogant, ignorant assertion that liberalism and leftism are just bad and ruin things, they JUST do, he doesn't need to prove it, Muir swallowing a blatant obvious falsehood to explain away something shameful and thinking this proves how clever, how with it, how patriotic he is. It's such a sterling display of all the awfulness and stupidity that make him... well, him.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Pirates of the High Seas.
The eternal whine of Muir's cast that they are the most persecuted people EVAH.
God, it's so tiresome.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Brick Bradford.
What makes this little bit of hate bearable is the fact that it is, again, being produced as his latest idol cracks up and runs out of political juice. This has been a regular feature in DbD, Muir declaring that the great victory is nigh, and that everyone now hates his opponent, and soon, soon... He's just gotten nastier and more blatant in how he says it.
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.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Hop Harrigan.
You know, the amount of times they've utterly thwarted this preposterous thing after previously utterly thwarting it takes on a certain comic grandeur that only gets better when the completely ridiculous nature of it--a prospective Muslim-only building project, on the Texas border--is considered. This is Muir so desperate for a hate object, he throws one together in a hurry, then keeps putting the resulting jumble back up so he can knock it down again.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Who's Guilty?
Won't lie, Muir going full Randroid during Begging Bowl season, a man begging for spare change to make his bad comics yelling about how he is a Maker, yeah, not a puh-parasite, never stops being amusing, and this time it's joined with full on Downfall-style denial of the actual world, as Muir does his best to avoid noticing how badly things are going for Trump right now. It's Muir at his most nakedly wretched and pathetic, a fraud and a failure on his own supposed terms not only following the same, but trying to pretend that it isn't just nonsense. That he won't cheerfully move the supposedly rigid goalposts of his beliefs all over the place to tell himself he and his are the real winners, and also the true Muricans.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Black Arrow.
I'll give him this--it took real effort to create the worst 'Cast Member as Bad Reporter' plotline, but damn it, he did it.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Desert Hawk.
And once again, delusion and utter sycophancy is the sign of a great reporter in Muir's mind. At least, if the government is a fascist trainwreck. Anyone else must see you trying to hurl crazyshit against the wall to see if it will stick.
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.
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.
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.
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.
