‘Day By Day’ Rescue Patrol

Looks like ol’ Chris Muir is still getting in trouble over there. Case in point: This recent effort:

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Above: Original Day By Day strip

Let’s do what we do best — i.e., help provide solutions:

082707234.jpg
Above: Enhanced Day By Day strip

Yay, all better!


Update:
In case Chris has found himself in a corner, politically speaking, we’ve prepared him a strip for tomorrow:

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062607asdef4.jpg

 

Comments: 87

 
 
 

I recognize it’s not really your problem, Gavin, but could you fix his eyes? The stupid lazy-ass triangles are buggin the crap outta me…

mikey

 
 

I think those are supposed to sunglasses.

 
 

Well, but what would I replace them with? Little brainwash-spirals? ‘@’ symbols?

 
 

Yeah, and fill in the space between the moustache and beard with teeth.

 
 

I’ll do it, but I don’t think this is going to work out…

 
 

Well, but what would I replace them with?

Mark Noonan’s eyebrows.

 
 

HAHA!

 
 

he looks more like I would expect him to.

 
 

Hmm. Ok, I guess I’d better change it…

 
 

I think it is kind of sweet how they sit in front of their laptops, with their Bluetooth on, reading to each other from the internets.

 
 

It is now funnier. I think all Chris Muir’s work would benefit from sheer panic on the face of every character.

 
 

Really, that’s my idea of a perfect relationship. Only with smarts, please.

 
 

the “@” is great for eyes, tho I kinda like an X

 
 

Why are wingnuts do bad at humor? Why?

Has all their humor been sucked out by Teh Wingnut Welfare Vampires, or something?

I think this question is doctoral thesis material.

I think I’ll just keep this comment on my clipboard. It is just so damn useful.

And Mikey- Appletinis? Are you serious? I figured you more the scotch on the rocks type.

 
 

Hmm. Ok, I guess I’d better change it…

Yesssssssss! Now it is teh awesome.

 
 

Heh, I predict that “key political benchmarks” will become a popular catchphrase in the future, used to indicate compliance with a small, meaningless subset of requirements while failing miserably on the actually critical requirements.

We have met “key political benchmarks” for this new automobile design. The headlight dimmers work exactly as designed, even though the passenger compartment is periodically flooded with gasoline.

See also: “cherry-picking”.

 
 

t4toby. I was pretending to be the voice from the executive suite. Since I have no real experience with that, I had to guess.

But thank you, and you’re right. I’d rather read two hundred Day by Day strips than drink an appletini.

Umm, just for future reference, what would an exec go drink at eleven am?

mikey

 
 

Umm, just for future reference, what would an exec go drink at eleven am?

Are they near a cruisy bathroom or not?

 
 

So did Chris Muir miss the part where key conservatives started the call for Maliki’s ouster, including the ones who advise the White House? And did he also miss the liberals bitching at Hillary for going along with the neo-cons on this one?

Of course, if those topics were covered in drawing classes, the answer would be self-evident, wouldn’t it?

 
 

So did Chris Muir miss the part where key conservatives started the call for Maliki’s ouster, including the ones who advise the White House?

La la la, Chris Muir can’t hear you!

 
 

Where can I get one of those sweet Balkankreuz laptops? Glowing Apple logos are fine, but nothing says “I’m going to annex your WiFi signal” like a glowing Iron Cross.

I think Damon looks much better now, like a character from one of Mike Mignola’s comics. Emperor Zombie, in fact.

 
League for the Defense of the @ Sign
 

Sirs:

I must protest in the most strenuous possible terms your replacing of Damon’s eyes with @ signs.

@ signs have literally hundreds of good uses. They are helpful in recording rates and measures in finance and architecture. And, of course, they appear in every e-mail address. Yes, the world would be a poorer place without the @ sign!

But the @ signs is not a human eye! Have you ever walked in a mall having torn out your eyeballs and replaced them with @s? Once you recover from the excruciating pain and loss of blood, you begin to notice the extreme prejudice with which everyone treats you.

There are so many good and interesting reasons to make fun of Chris Muir. Bringing @ signs into it is at best lazy. And at worst it suggests how deeply prejudiced this “progressive” site is.

If you do not replace the @ signs with something more appropriate (celery, perhaps?), I’ll denounce you on another blog…or better yet pointlessly hijack this thread.

You’ve been warned….

Sincerely,
@

 
 

Gavin, if you are intimidated by the evil threats from @ at 22:18, I humbly suggest as replacements:

® ©

 
Fishbone McGonigle
 

Every time I read one of those goddamn strips, I reflexively imagine Damon to have the voice of Giancarlo Esposito.

Which is too bad, because I’ve got nothing specific against Mr Esposito.

 
 

Do the duck! Give Mallard Fillmore a chance to be clever for once in his sad existence. Make him feel like he actually beat that Doonesbury once, just once. It’ll become his anecdotal equivalent to “there was that time I got to play in a varsity game…”

 
 

what would an exec go drink at eleven am

Bloody Mary, perhaps, but beer is always appropriate.

And don’t be upset, Mr. @, we heartily appreciate the hardship your fellows are enduring on this mission, as well as that of their partner, Bared Teeth. Their bravery has not gone unnoted!

 
 

Don’t mind @ folks. Ever since Tomlinson saved @ from removal on standard keyboards due to “obsolescence” @ has been a monster to live with.

 
 

I object!

 
 

Do people become right-wing comic strip artists because they are genetically incapable of intuiting even the most basic rule of comedy, the Rule of Three, the whole reason that comic strips are often divided into three panels?

Example: Bill Murray, Ghostbusters: “We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!” There is nothing inherently clever about that, but it’s funny because the third item in the series breaks the expected pattern. Now let’s parse this strip. “Hillary Clinton is wrong, Hillary Clinton is more wrong, Hillary Clinton: village idiot!” It hits the ground like a lead balloon instead of with a badump-bump.

 
 

Mikey-

I assume execs drink the blood of dark people (or the poor, take your pick) and vodka, served shaken and up.

 
 

It occurs to me that conservatives use the phrase ‘Liberal Establishment’ a lot less than they used to.

what would an exec go drink at eleven am?

Mimosa? Mimosatini?

And Remember:

It takes a viking to raze a village.

 
 

I covered this in my blog a few days ago. Krauthammer specifically called out a non-democratic takedown of the government as one (or the?) solution.

We should have given up on Nouri al-Maliki long ago and begun to work with other parties in the Iraqi parliament to bring down the government, yielding either a new coalition of less sectarian parties or, as Pollack has suggested, new elections.

Note the “or.” New elections or something else. And the new elections are the result of the takedown, not the method. He didn’t say we need to take down the government via new elections, he said we need to take it down and then have new elections – maybe. Or we could just skip that part.

 
 

Awesome update.

 
 

Questions for Chris Muir: Why is the woman holding a pen to her mouth in every frame? Or is that a lipstick pencil? What happened to the baby? Wasn’t the female character pregnant? I seem to remember a protruding stomach and a spine concaved to the breaking point.

 
 

I think Damon looks much better now, like a character from one of Mike Mignola’s comics. Emperor Zombie, in fact.

“Damn you, Screw-On Head!”

I was thinking of the ice-cream eating, Nixon-mask-wearing possibly malevolent nun from “Fell.” Is there any way she could get a cameo here? ‘Cause that might make the shitass comic, y’know, almost cool.

For a second.

 
 

See, he called Hilary Clinton an idiot. That’s funny!

 
 

what would an exec go drink at eleven am

Why don’t you go fix yourself a nice bowl of Scotch?

 
 

Why are wingnuts do bad at humor? Why?

The original strip above shows why – if you try to get creative, you might get ahead of the orthodoxy. Then you only have three choices:

1) Pretend it never happened, scrub or modify the offending strip with no explanation
2) Walk it back, all the while insisting you’re not changing anything
3) Try to brazen it out as a “maverick”

Always safest just to repeat what the Komedy Kommissars have already done.

 
 

So did Chris Muir miss the part where key conservatives started the call for Maliki’s ouster, including the ones who advise the White House? And did he also miss the liberals bitching at Hillary for going along with the neo-cons on this one?

you are missing Rule #1 of Wingnut Humor- if a Clinton is in the punchline; it doesnt matter what reality is, if it makes no sence, or it doesnt have a damn thing to do with any of the other panels- If a Clinton is the punch line it’s Teh Komedy GOLD baby!

 
 

Day by Day wikipedia entry:
The strip is usually three colorized panels, comprising a combination of newly drawn art and a library of hand drawn elements that Muir has digitized and reuses. Muir has stated in interviews that by crafting the cartoons digitally, and using previously drawn faces, expressions, and body postures, he can react quickly to the news.

It doesn’t say that he actually drew them only that he digitized them. So I wonder about that.

Chris Muir quotes:
I was born a 45 year old conservative. But you know what? Conservative isn’t even “conservative” anymore. It’s a label for normal.
Say what you like about dictators, but they do make cool architecture, blank check, etc. Here’s that ‘Pass of Swords’ monument, though all I could think of was that song lyric, ‘Big hands, you know you’re the One’. What? You were looking for trenchant analysis? Sorry. C-A-R-T-O-O-N-I-S-T.

Hilarious.

 
 

Muir says that the “Maliki government agreed today on key political benchmarks.” Muir doesn’t actually read the news, does he?

 
 

It doesn’t say that he actually drew them only that he digitized them. So I wonder about that.

I think the actual artist is Loleatta Holloway.

 
 

“he can react quickly to the news.”

sometimes too quickly!!

 
 

Alfred Bester had a main character named “@kins” (Atkins) in ‘The Demolished Man’. He was a good guy, an honest cop and straight-arrow psychic hunting down a homicidal plutocrat. If anything, he was making bad guys into zombies, not the other way around.

I don’t know how to tie this back around to Chris Muir, so I won’t try.

 
 

New text for the ‘panic’ panel: “Shit, cops know the tearoom code?!”

 
 

I know for a fact that Thomas Kinkade has a sweatshop in Gilroy where an army of southeast asian people paint highlights on his “custom” lithos. There are guys that just do cars, and guys that just do streetlights, and guys that just do flowers, and guys that just do people. It’s almost like paint-by-numbers. They crank ’em out on demand.

But I’m wondering. If I found some schmuck to draw a set of, say, five characters in a bunch of different poses and expressions, and digitized them, maybe in pieces that could be reassembled, could I use them and write the words and by so doing become a “cartoonist”?

mikey

 
 

But I’m wondering. If I found some schmuck to draw a set of, say, five characters in a bunch of different poses and expressions, and digitized them, maybe in pieces that could be reassembled, could I use them and write the words and by so doing become a “cartoonist”?

mikey

Only if you’ll toe the line for the neocons, mikey. That’s why we call it wingnut welfare.

 
 

“could I use them and write the words and by so doing become a “cartoonist”?”

Only after your lobotomy

 
 

Only after your lobotomy

Lobotomy??! They said it was a “brain massage!”

 
 

Dood, I’m totally for rent.

We’ve already determined what it is that I am.

At this point, we’re just negotiating the price…

mikey

 
 

The Day By Day remixes are kinda funny, but, to me,

STUPID + STUPID = JUST REALLY STUPID

 
 

I had a girlfriend who worked in a little bar in Pittsburgh’s financial district. It was setup in a room in a parking garage. It was called “Quo Vadis”. It was a metal door, set in a wall on one or the levels, with a Roman Helmet on it. That’s all.

All they served there was vodka drinks. Vodka rocks, vodka ‘tini’s. Vodka straight up. That’s it. No fruit juices. Just vodka.

It’s clientele was nothing but financial executives. The placed opened at 10:00AM and people would be entering immediately upon opening. The 7 Martini lunch was not unheard of. Anything but.

Perhaps that gives you some idea about what an executive would drink at 11:00AM.

 
 

Um, before we get too far out there on the whole “pre-existing clip-art in comics is always Teh SUXX0rz!11!” thing, do please consider Get Your War On, which is the shiznit.

 
 

But I’m wondering. If I found some schmuck to draw a set of, say, five characters in a bunch of different poses and expressions, and digitized them, maybe in pieces that could be reassembled, could I use them and write the words and by so doing become a “cartoonist”?

Am I the only one who thought of Daily Dinosaur Comix?

Although I have to say, I think if anybody here got on wingnut welfare, odds are they’d make something funnier than Day by Day.

 
 

Oh, David Rees is a god, no doubt. I found GYWO in November of ’01. About halfway down page four is the strip where he says:


The “office of Homeland Security” makes the DMV look like fucking Delta Force! And, look,I understand why bin laden sounds crazy–he’s an eleven foot tall motherfucker who lives in a cave. But why does Bush sound like he’s addressing a fucking Dungeons & Dragons convention?

It was barely a month after 9/11 when he did the one that said:

As-Salaam Alaikum. Do you have any alcohol left in your cubicle? I’ve been studying current events again.

And the other guy says:

Shalom. There are five bottles of Jim Beam under my desk–two are empty and three are full. Come on over.

mikey

 
 

Where can I get one of those sweet Balkankreuz laptops? Glowing Apple logos are fine, but nothing says “I’m going to annex your WiFi signal” like a glowing Iron Cross.

Oh, heck. Doesn’t that yahoo know that Macs are the computers that the good guys use? Watch movies. Hell, even watch 24 and you’ll see it. The bad guys use brand-free PC laptops, and the good guys use Mac laptops.

And the real good guys – the tech geniuses – use some amalgam of Unix. Duh.

 
the dryyyyyyy cracker
 

Superdude–

That Ghostbusters quote’s actually a play on “Vini, Vidi, Vici.” Your point stands, just not that particular example.

Also, Archie wanted your name as the vanity plate for his jalopy, but the press had an 8-letter limit, so guess what he ended up with?

Yeah, I know, but it was funny for “Archie.” Hey, lookit me, bringing it back around to unfunny comic strips.

 
 

Whoever drew that art, it’s ass. There have been Day by Day panels that I had to look at two or three times to figure out what they were supposed to represent. Also, it makes comic books seem anatomically accurate.
Nevermind the lack of comedic talent, the guy can’t draw, especially considering the probability he digitized the best of his efforts. Woof.

 
 

Dinosaur Comix is more like a sonnet*–the structure is always the same, but what’s said changes. In some ways it’s more difficult to never change the images and still come up with a joke.

OK, that was pretentious, but I really like Dinosaur Comix.

*I forget where I read that; maybe via Dave Willis, I dunno.

 
 

Back in ’98, when I was mastering, I had a PC, a Mac and a Sun Workstation in my office. The mac was by far the clunkiest of systems. Don’t let them sell you a story. Macs are unnecessarily convoluted and painful. At least they’ve figured out you can have a mouse with more than one button, but arrrghhh…

Or, in the tradition of old comix, AAAIIIIIEEEE!!

mikey

 
 

Yeah, I know, but it was funny for “Archie.”

[bonked in head with errant tennis ball]

 
 

Jas wrote: “And the real good guys – the tech geniuses – use some amalgam of Unix. Duh.”

Yeah, Mac OS X.

mikey – Mac OS before OS X did suck, but OS X is very different.

 
 

Cool thing is, Jon, it just don’t matter anymore. I don’t live in an OS anymore. I live in firefox more and more. Webmail, Google Docs, Blogger, Flickr, box.net, hell, I’m getting closer to living entirely in the cloud. Then things get interesting…

mikey

 
 

Mac OS before OS X did suck, but OS X is very different.

I found the old Mac OS pretty easy and intuitive to deal with. For sound and music Macs were awesome. They could natively read almost any file format you threw at them, and the file organization of the system was super simple.

OS X is lots better, but this last update brought a lot of weird clunkiness. Just proof that nobody really gets it right. I’ve been thinking of trying out Ubuntu just for the heck of it.

 
 

No, not Mac OS X. A fine OS, but watch your movies more closely. When they have to “reroute the encryption keys” it’s some unrecognizable OS on a large-scale workstation.

Though I get your point – OS X is a best of breed Unix.

And Bubba, if you’re interested, I’ll send you a CD. I’ve got the latest version of Ubuntu sitting right here. Drop me an email, I’d gladly fling it your way.

 
 

“It is now funnier. I think all Chris Muir’s work would benefit from sheer panic on the face of every character.”

I second Bubba’s suggestion. Constant panic would make the characters seem like true conservatives, not the faux hipsters they’re portrayed as being.

 
 

kingubu wrote:
Um, before we get too far out there on the whole “pre-existing clip-art in comics is always Teh SUXX0rz!11!” thing, do please consider Get Your War On, which is the shiznit.

Several good strips do something like that. Red Meat comes to mind. The difference is that those strips actually have something to say other than ‘Liberulz-is-doodoo-headz’.

Mikey wrote:
I know for a fact that Thomas Kinkade has a sweatshop in Gilroy where an army of southeast asian people paint highlights on his “custom” lithos.

Aha! Meagan McArdle was right – great art has been created in sweatshops.

 
 

good call, kingubu! but while we’re appreciating gywo (which played a key role in getting me through 2001-2003), let’s not forget its siblings, adventures of confessions of st. augustine bear, my new filing technique is unstoppable, and my new fighting technique is unstoppable.

also, david rees’s speech at columbia university is totally awesome. if you don’t have time to watch the entire thing, i recommend checking out the first couple of minutes. it starts a little slowly, but one of the first things he does is to give “props” to his corporate sponsor, the new york times’ thomas freidman metaphor illustration service. and it is hilarious.

 
LA Confidential Pantload
 

Xenos,

Alfred Bester was a terrific writer; Chris Muir is….well, if you can’t say something nice about someone…..

 
 

the dryyyyyyy cracker said,
That Ghostbusters quote’s actually a play on “Vini, Vidi, Vici.” Your point stands, just not that particular example.

1) Veni, vidi, vici is usually translated as “I came, I saw, I conquered”

2) Bill Murray switches the THIRD ITEM IN THE SERIES to make the quote “I came, I saw, I kicked its ass.”

3) The audience’s expectations are confounded. He said “Ass” instead of finishing a famous Julius Caesar quote! Rule of Three Followed.

Woo ha! Comedy gold! My point stands for this particular example.

 
 

Please no platform wars.

For me and as a “creative” I would love to have a Mac, I just can’t afford them. But my impressions of them are all pre OSX. They seem to be made for people who don’t want to be bothered with too much techie stuff. I can understand that.

I made the mistake of getting Windows XP 64 and my god! I wish I never bought this POS. I’d like to switch to Ubutu but it just didn’t work out. The apps I use have to run on Windows and I need them running on bare metal.

 
 

And Bubba, if you’re interested, I’ll send you a CD.

Thanks Jas. I’ve actually got a recent image kicking around that I just haven’t dealt with yet.

I made the mistake of getting Windows XP 64 and my god! I wish I never bought this POS.

I can’t fix your windows problem but this can make life on a PC much much better:

http://www.launchy.net/

 
 

noen, perhaps you could dual-boot and just have a very small Windows installation for the apps you need? Like others have pointed out, people are living inside Firefox more and more these days…

Oh, and for what it’s worth, the basis of Ubuntu, Debian, has a web site that lets you install from Windows without changing BIOS settings or burning CDs:

http://www.goodbye-windows.com/

 
 

…and it doesn’t require you to destroy your installation of Windows. Provided you have enough free disk space it can resize your Windows install without destroying any data.

 
 

Hey thanks and yeah, I could dual boot and I even have a separate drive I could use. I even have a live Ubuntu CD I burned, you don’t even need to install. It just boots and runs right from the CD. I’ve done it before but I spent so much time on not being productive I felt it wasn’t worth it. As for space, well, when I matchmove or rotoscope I get raw HD plates. They are very big files.

 
 

That Veni, Vidi, Vici, thing reminds me of an awful joke I told many years ago and which may have been inspired by the Murray line. In response to a question about a new girlfriend, I said Vidi, Vici, VeniVeniVeni, which I translated to I saw, I conquered, I came three times.

 
 

What happened to the baby? Wasn’t the female character pregnant? I seem to remember a protruding stomach and a spine concaved to the breaking point.

It’s still there, just getting squished by the table edge. Look at the outline of the bottom of her shirt.

As far as her spinal curvature, this is about the best he’s gotten with it.

 
 

Veni, Vidi, Vino.

What an Italian executive does before 11:00 a.m.

 
 

Although I have to say, I think if anybody here got on wingnut welfare, odds are they’d make something funnier than Day by Day.

I bet you a whole dollar Lefties would create better, funnier, more trenchant right-wing comics than those done by real right-wingers. It’s kind of sad.

 
Michael Harrington
 

Aprés pablo: “I second Bubba’s suggestion. Constant panic would make the characters seem like true conservatives, not the faux hipsters they’re portrayed as being.’

That is far and away the most annoying thing about this nonsensical tripe. That Muir tries to fob off a set of characters like this, urban sophisticates (as Fishbone points out, the one guy is a straight up Giancarlo Esposito, not the sort I’ve ever heard mouthing shopworn anti-Clinton rhetoric and the latest spellbinding insights from Rich Lowry), who nonetheless spout opinions far more in line with LGF’s readership (who probably refuse to read the strip anyway, in protest of it’s apparent endorsement of miscegenation.)

 
 

“Vici, veni, VD” – “I saw, I came, I cankered.”

Talking about Thomas Kinkade, it’s even worse than you think. I friend of mine spent six months there working on packaging to minimize breakage during shipment, and he saw everything. Two words for how the litho prints are generated: laser printers. What a fucking racket.

 
 

“I came and then I came and then I came and then I saw” — The Dwarves

 
 

How are either of those funny? No seriously, where’s the joke?

 
 

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