You Should Check Out Dilbert
I was scrounging around my brother's room a few years ago when I found a huge collection of Dilbert books. Each is a collection of comic strips. Many have been released, including titles like Fugitive From the Cubicle Police and Casual Day Has Gone Too Far.
Dilbert is one of those newspaper comics alongside Garfield or FoxTrot that are older than dirt, yet still are being made to this day. Heck, Garfield manages to keep going daily 42 years after release. I don't know how Jim Davis manages to do it after so long. Dilbert, while still pretty old, is over a decade younger at 31 years.
If you don't know what Dilbert is about, let me enlighten you. It follows our titular character, Dilbert, a white-collar engineer, while satirizing the workplace and bureaucracy. The somewhat absurd events that occur mixed in the mundane act as a great way to set up jokes. After several decades, the setting still allows for humor you can chuckle at, even if you haven't worked in an office.
It isn't just Dilbert, of course. One of the most important characters is the Boss, who is immature and ignorant, but annoyingly cheerful. He tries to motivate employees using strange sayings but barely knows a thing about actually helping. The Boss often says "work smarter, not harder" as a response to the employees' complaints. The Boss is one of the most significant characters since he's the source of many strips that satirize the incompetency of management roles.
I have been reading Dilbert for a while, and in my opinion, the old ones are a lot funnier than the ones currently running in the paper. This is a really good introduction to the series. I definitely appreciate that you linked the online version, I didn't know that existed!
ReplyDeleteI see Dilbert in the paper, and I haven't really found it that entertaining because the paper doesn't do many comics justice. This makes me see the comic in a better light.
ReplyDeleteI believe that you have done a great disservice to both Foxtrot and Dilbert by comparing them to Garfield. Dilbert and Foxtrot have authors who really like their work and have developed good characters and story lines for their comic strips. Garfield was created for the express purpose of selling merchandise and as a result of the authors lack of enthusiasm the characters are one dimensional and the jokes fall flat.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of Dilbert until I saw this post, but I just read a few of the comic strips on the website you provided, and they were pretty funny. Thanks for introducing me to it! I like that you gave a brief overview of the characters because it made it easier to figure out who has what role when I started reading Dilbert.
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