An Upended Car, Spinning Its Wheels Pointlessly...

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Spell of the Circus.

It's really astonishing how completely pointless this entire... thing is.

And this for a strip that has always excelled at pointlessness.

The Latest Edition Of 'Skye Has It Bad For Zed'.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Battling with Buffalo Bill.

As we see more and more confirmations that the strip's continuity has gone gummy, I feel obligated to note that the Zed-Skye dynamic has been this bad at the bottom of it for years, and is probably the big reason all of Skye's relationships and potential relationships in the strip have flamed out. Muir's desire to hatefuck her is that complete and that possessive.

"So What Do You Call It?" "The Aristocrats!"

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Danger Island.

...

The labeling of these strips suggest some fan is paying for this, which only causes me to shake my head in dull wonder.

...So This Is Some Elseworld Or Dream Sequence Then, And Thus Irrelevant. Got It.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Heroes of the Flames.

I find myself reiterating that I remember a time when most of the female cast didn't want to fuck Zed.

A Retcon That Explains Nothing.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Finger Prints.

As I look at this bizarre flashback, I am left baffled where he's going with this, and debating why I should care, as there's an excellent case he'll about-face either immediately or in the near future. There are only two things this strip leaves me sure of--firstly, Muir's as tangled in his constantly altered internal chronology as most casual readers would be. And secondly, he at least partially regrets getting rid of Skye's tattoos when he decided he was going to make her an upstanding citizen.

The Transition Era; Part 4: A New More Constant Version Of The Sitcom From Hell. Now With More Politics!

 And so now on to that other half of the Owens' equation. Which to be fair is closer to 3/4s. While Zed spends his time earning his dough at a low-paying job he's somehow not qualified for, Sam takes care of the home life, which includes the twins and having Skye lounging around. Oh, and taking lots of calls from Zed, who needs her help to answer hardware questions. Yes, Zed is constantly on the phone with his wife on his supposed temp job that he will somehow keep for two years.

Just let it flow through you.

Sam sits in an interesting place during the early parts of this period. While she tosses out that she'll be doing some consultant work from home early on, this never gets developed on and to be frank, Muir likely just forgets about it. Sam is presented as mostly a homemaker. As for the twins (named Caroline Kiko Owens and Catherine Mari Owens, both destined to be known by their middle names), they're props. Which is at least forgivable at this point, because, well, babbies. Come back in a few years where things will not have improved. The most worrying thing about the pair at this point was how badly Muir drew them which was very, very badly.

This is another thing he will not improve at.

And then there's Skye, and well, there's something we have to deal with. I largely just nodded in the direction of the issue during the Mystery Business(tm) Era, but now it comes front and center. Sam and Skye clearly actually have a sizable gap of years between them. While Skye's age is left somewhat vague, she is definitely in her early 20s at this point. While this put the age gap at 20 years or higher pre-retcon, even after Sam got aged down, there should be a good decade and a half between them. Speaking for all older siblings with that kind of gap--this changes the relationship dynamics.  You are an adult while this sibling is a child and that changes everything. The relationship is usually more avuncular, sometimes even parental. There is affection--often deep affection--but there is also distance.

Sam and Skye have the dynamics of a pair of siblings who fought over toys. Indeed, sometimes the strip out and out says they did, which.... well, would suggest bad things about Sam's maturity if one were to accept her age as stated. But in truth this is just another indication that the fluidity of Sam's years that settled in over the Late Mystery Business(tm) Period was going to be a permanent feature.

I dwell on this now for a simple reason--Skye and Sam's relationship was moving to a new prominence in this period. The pair frequently found themselves anchoring not just strips but storylines. And so we saw more and more of them butting heads, and, well, they did not have a great dynamic. Muir wrote Skye to be nasty and unpleasant, and she was. But when he wrote Sam responding to this unpleasantness, he wrote what amounted to her standard response--match it then overwhelm it.

Which meant that Muir's "good sister" was written as more unpleasant than his "bad sister", something that would largely continue to be the case for most of the strip's run.

Once again, looking at the overall model Muir was using, his intent here was clear. Early on, Muir frequently looked to sitcoms for models of his setting. The Mystery Business(tm) Era had been intended to be a workplace comedy, but frequently defaulted (most likely more by accident than intention) into the 90s-early Double Aughts urban professional pals comedy, the format Seinfeld had perfected, and Friends had figured out how to homogenize into something a little less savage. But again, neither had really been working for Muir. The workplace comedy as workplace comedy had largely been moribund for most of Mystery Business(tm)'s existence, a thing he only managed to get the occasional strip and a handful of weak brief, inconsequential storylines out of. The urban professional pals material that he seemed to default to out of a lack of direction was vague and even more inconsequential.  It filled panels, but it didn't suggest new storylines. Muir wanted a setup where he could swiftly brainstorm something besides 'cast members sit around and yak at each other.'

And so, to start the next phase of his comic's existence, Muir shifted into the early 90s blue-collar family sitcom, a format he felt would act as creative lubricant. Obviously, these were not his only reasons. Muir's creative processes are often quite clearly a muddle of knee-jerk reactions,wish fulfillment, and artistic shortcuts. As I noted last time, so much of what happens to Zed seems to be about giving his fake self a life he wished he had. But it does seem safe to say that moving Zed and Sam's section of the strip's setting to this was about a genre jump he thought would work. 

I've used the phrase 'Sitcom from Hell' to describe DbD's non-political or less-political strips' usual combo of hackneyed, cliched situational "humor" operating with the cast's deeply unpleasant personalities to producing something that is not only gratingly unfunny but has a sort of unsettling uncanny valley effect. A sitcom written by a deeply unpleasant someone who doesn't understand sitcoms, but thinks they do. The new domestic setting that was being created was not only going to result in a great deal of it, it would start fusing a cloying, cloddish attempt at sentimentality that would somehow make it all worse. 

And just wait until you see what the other half of the Core Four were getting up to.

Enjoy A Shotgun Blast Of Muir's Warped Family Values!

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Tarzan the Mighty.

...

And I'm actively relieved that this one of the more sedate takes on his breast-feeding fetish. That's what years of following this strip has done to me.

Again, Charming Family Values.

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.

Those Good Ol' Fashioned Family Values...

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.

The Uncanny Valley Of Human Relations.

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.

In This Family, They Show How Wholesome They Are By Othering Members Who Don't Conform!

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.

A Confirmation Muir Has Never Read 'Oliver Twist'.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because A Woman in the Web.

So, this is the next week and a half, eh? Muir whining and begging for more money while insisting, no, no, that's not what he's doing.

...

Oh, boy, that's going to be tiresome.

The Mystery Business(TM) Era; Part 15: A New, MORE Inferior Sort Of Leftist.

 By 2006, both the political situation and Muir's strip had changed.  As noted before, Muir had painted the opposition to the Iraq War as a bunch of shiftless, cowardly hippies during the War's buildup--after the quick fall of Saddam's government, he went to ignoring them outright, clearly feeling that the matter was over and he had won. However, the opposition to the War didn't stop and instead broadened, especially as toppling Saddam did not in fact lead to a speedy peace, but instead to a violent insurgency and lengthy occupation. Now, as noted last time, Muir's response to what was actually happening in Iraq was a mixture of studiously ignoring it, and actively gaslighting about it, all while whining about how the press/Democrats/people were misleading the public and being unpatriotic and stuff. But that still left him a more visible, militant Left to deal with than the sort of genteel establishment liberalism represented by Jan. Muir could see the need for another Left character.

And of course, there were other issues with Jan--while she was still allowed moments of her previous feckless idiocy to show what Muir imagined was the liberal viewpoint, her relationship with Damon moved her firmly into one of the good ones, a person Muir imagined was only kept from seeing the transcendent truth by sentimentality, habit, and of course, the evil Leftist conspiracy to lead good young women like her astray. While she hadn't moved completely to her Fox Liberal role yet of showing the audience just how wretched the Democrats were by having this liberal staring agog at their perfidy, she was already making moves in that direction. And of course, both these moves had another source that we'll talk about in the future when we talk about a... certain aspects of the strip, and how it stood at this time. (Let's put a pin in that one, all right?)

Now, the fact was Muir didn't mind this, because he'd clearly had a lot of fun with his vision of the anti-war Left during the buildup, people he enjoyed punching even more than the Democrats. That undifferentiated blob of stupid hippies started showing up again, and then in 2006, a couple were shown praising themselves for booing Hillary Clinton, allowing Muir to bash both her and them simultaneously. A couple strips later, and "Sky" explains that she's going to go visit her in Florida, one of the few clear references to the setting at this point.

And boom. Like that, Sam suddenly had a younger sibling. (That Sam had never mentioned such a sibling previously or the fact that, initially, Sam and her sister had in the vicinity of twenty years between them were just part of the shoddy construction.) Skye--she gained the 'e' on her third appearance--was that mass of dirty hippie peaceniks concentrated into one character. Written to be as obnoxious as possible, she was lazy, perennially unemployed, viciously self-righteous, in essence, every form of sheer awfulness that Muir imagined when he imagined a leftist. She willfully sponges off her sister, a complete parasite. Indeed, Skye isn't going to have any sort of discernible job for years, just floating around and being "left". She's rude, childish, and egotistical. Of course, so is the rest of Muir's cast, but Muir doesn't realize that, he thinks they're quirky and lovable. Another thing that will be come clear very quickly is that Skye's bluntness means she frequently puts her arguments rather forcibly, making the supposedly right-thinking cast look even worse. But again, Muir doesn't notice that. He simply assumes he's built a loser, and that the audience will respond as expected.

And so, his new straw leftist in hand, Muir waits for the Democrats' inevitable defeat in 2006 so he can chuckle about them thinking all this criticism of the glorious war was a good idea.

The Democrats win control of Congress. Muir is irritated, but still convinced that it's all just a temporary disturbance. And that will produce... well, a lot. Oh, such a lot.

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."

"YES, THIS IS CLEARLY WHAT'S HAPPENING IN CALIFORNIA RIGHT NOW!"

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Don Daredevil Rides Again.

It's kind of fascinating that he jumps onto the Swalwell story well after it's fallen to the wayside, and crows triumphantly about the state of California Democrats right as the governor's race starts seeing solid front-runners emerge. But then coming in a day late and a dollar short while screaming about bright futures that don't happen has been Muir's calling card for decades now, hasn't it?

Just So Much... Ugh.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The James Brothers of Missouri.

...

...

There's a voice in my mind going 'And into this strip, the Dork Lord poured all his misogyny, all his lust, and all his simultaneous hatred of and abasement before wealth and power.'

It sounds like Cate Blanchett, so that's cool.

See, It's Okay, Because She's Virtual...

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because G-Men Never Forget.

Ahh, yes, Muir doing the bit where he mixes being sleazy with being self-righteous. Never gets old.

Well, He's Certainly Dealing With Issues. Of A Sort.

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Burn 'Em Up Barnes.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again--the extent to which Muir has checked out is breathtaking. We get strip after strip of him just whining about how powerless he is, in a Republican trifecta, because nothing is working, and so he has to go extra-heavy on the conspiracy to keep the reality that everything he wants is shit from breaking through.  

Jackie Gleason Sarcastically Saying "Har De Har Har."

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Hurricane Express.

There is something so wearisome in this pretense of wit, in Muir trying to pretend he isn't saying what he's saying, and imagining he's getting away with it.