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.
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 safe to say that the Mystery Business(tm) Era has a strange relation to the later eras of the strip. It's the debut, after all, which introduced the core cast--or at least the original core cast of four. But, except for Damon, that cast barely resembles those early versions of themselves, a bunch of strange substitutes who bear the same name but little more. The simple shallow cores of the characters may remain, but everything around them is completely transformed. Sam is (again, after the unaltered Damon) the closest to her original character, but even that is often a rough similarity. Modern Sam is a vicious unpleasant bitch--to an extent that puts her original self to shame--who goes on about engineering every now and then to establish her as smart and logical, and just ignore your lying eyes. But the modern Sam is a proud redneck, a country girl who don't like them cityfolk, in essence a far cry from the urban professional of the Mystery Business(tm) Era. Her age has been quietly lowered over the years (most of the time), a process that started quite prominently at the very end of the era, but has subtly continued since. It's hard to think she and her now husband used to spend strips complaining about how they were a couple of aging forty year-olds who felt increasingly out of place in the modern world, but then as I've noted before, characters in DbD don't develop, they change. Sam now seems to be a nearly ageless vixen, even if she's now a grandmother. Who recently gave Zed yet another child herself.
Zed is an even more extreme change, an entirely new character sitting in the old's remodeled skin. The process of becoming Captain Mitty that began in the later years of the Mystery Business(tm) Era and accelerated in the Transition Era (something we'll be examining heavily in the upcoming segments) has run its course and turned him into a scowling attempt at an action hero. Zed's original schlub status and human touches are gone, replaced by a grim idol of toxic masculinity. And Zed is fortunate compared to Jan, who is now a hollow space where a character was, nodding along with her husband against the values she was created to embody. What little importance she has in the strip comes from the deus ex machinas that are her father and her son, supplying the Compound with infinite Plot Coupons through limitless wealth and infinite magitek respectively.
For that matter, while Damon's character remains the same, the one member of the cast who is still who he was to begin with, well... as I said in the first entry about him... he doesn't show up much anymore. He might still be the same guy but the strip doesn't need that guy anymore. And Muir seems to realize this on some level--every effort to bring him back ends with Damon shuffling off after a few weeks, Jan in tow. It seems that nostalgia is what keeps them around these days, in so much that they're even around.
And that nostalgia is key to understanding the bizarre relationship that the Mystery Business(tm) Era has with the strip's later days. Muir clearly has a sentimental attachment to the early days of the strip, beyond some simple wish to keep some level of continuity. But he can never indulge too much in that sentiment, because the strip that now exists just doesn't match the early one. The DbD that is now is an elaborate, rickety structure built over a ditch, and focusing on the foundations could send the entire structure toppling down below. There's clearly a part of Muir that wants to just abandon it all and move on to a new work--witness the occasional side projects. And yet, both fears of losing his audience and his own attachment to what he's made keeps him still writing the old strip--again, witness the occasional side projects being presented as fictional works created by Sam, featuring protagonists that are supposed to be self-inserts of her. He just can't move on. Aside from his business model, something in him won't let him. And so we get the occasional strange wistful comment on the past, one that ignores most of what actually happened at the time.
This can go in odd places. I've referred to the fate of poor Suzi the Intern on multiple occasions, and now is a good time to detail it. Over a decade after her aborted storyline ended abruptly without even really starting, and she unceremoniously exited the strip, Sam brought her up to her husband during a discussion of the "Me Too" movement. This was a standard misogynistic denial of its legitimacy, during which Sam chuckled that Zed was lucky that "Suzi from a few years ago" didn't make a (spurious) report on him. Now, you may think that depicting the movement as nothing more than hysterical women reporting on men that they'd been obsessed with would be the low point of this. But, no it got worse. Zed wound up giving Suzi what she'd never had in her actual appearances, a last name. Indeed, "Suzi Strom" got a sudden nationality change--she was apparently Swedish, something that had never been indicated at the time. No, Zed stated, Suzi wouldn't be saying anything. She had gone back to Sweden years ago, where he stated she had been "raped to death" by her Muslim boyfriend. He then followed this up with a cruel quip.
Yes, that was how Muir had her die, in a cruel manner that regurgitated racist talking points about Europe, Muslims and interracial dating, and misogynistic talking points about women reporting rape, as well as liberal women daring to not do what reactionary white guys demand they do. Made into an object lesson that insisted not only were left and center-left women bad, but they deserve to have bad things happen to them. That's what the Mystery Business(tm) Era has been for the past decade or so. Something to occasionally mine for counterfeit continuity, fraudulent sentiment and cheap shock.
And so this era stands, both the starting point, and yet a near complete contradiction of what would follow, save, of course, for its politics. But of course, there's a lot more strip ahead, and in the next era, we're going to see that rickety structure get built. Prepare for wackiness.
But not fun wackiness. Oh no.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Elmo the Mighty.
There is something bleakly comic about how the endless accusations of how the cast are being victimized by the perv-elite have gradually risen through the ranks.
That and how Muir doesn't seem to realize the inherent hypocrisy and projection in the charge. Once again, when he imagines a bad guy, he pretty much imagines himself.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Bull's Eye.
Muir's ability to be self-righteous about being wretched has always been a thing, it's just that the wretchedness has gotten oh, so worse over the years.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Queen of the Jungle.
As we take in this pathetic racist swill, a reminder that the population of the US is nearly 350 million, making Muir's impressive sounding number look... well, small.
Especially when you realize that our mighty Murican is quaking in his boots about women and children.
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 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 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 Son of the Guardsman.
It's a good example of the moral wretchedness of this fictional universe that Sam and Zed clearly feel the only morally objectionable part of this proposed death camp is that they, a family of good volk would be near it.
And that they overcome this objection by thinking that, well, hey, they'd be guys doing some of the murdering.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Brenda Starr, Reporter.
I see Muir's trying to distract himself from watching the Second Trump Administration hit its terminal phase by looking across the Atlantic for things to be a racist moral nullity about.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Batman.
I reiterate, such... wholesome family values.
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 The Clutching Hand.
Man. As vile and morally bankrupt as all this is, it's also just so pathetic. This is Muir crashing out in real time, staring at a reality that looks very bad for him, shutting his eyes, and desperately trying to insist that it is something else entirely. The last time I saw him this bad was way back in 2020 when he was trying to convince himself that no, no, Biden hadn't won, it was all a trick, all a trick, Trump was going to throw all the Democrats in prison any day now.
It's gonna be a crazy year, folks.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Custer's Last Stand.
This legion of misquotes and bullshit are pretty rich coming from a guy who's trafficked in worse, and whined and screamed persecution at even the faintest hint of being called on it. But it also underlines what a gutless wonder Muir is under it all. He's like the people who, to paraphrase the quote, waged war on the naive belief that they would bomb everyone and no one would bomb them.
And I don't think I need to tell you how that went for them.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Man With the Steel Whip.
It's kind of amazing how this imagined "Muslim community" on the Texas border just keeps popping back up every few months because Muir so loves giving his cast punching bags that he's having this one spontaneously regenerate over and over again so Sam can complain about or destroy it again.
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?
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because King of the Rocket Men.
Sometimes Muir making every character 'Muir in different hats' goes in real creepy directions.
It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Federal Agents vs. Underworld, Inc.
...
I'm sorry, it's just in addition to the hypocrisy, we've got Muir portraying Elon Musk as possessing both moral fiber and disgust with Epstein, neither of which are true. (A reminder that, just like Il Puce, Muskrat was far closer to Epstein than the people Muir likes to imagine were his besties.)
