Dilbert

Themes

The comic strip originally revolved around Dilbert and his "pet" dog Dogbert in their home. Many plots revolved around Dilbert's engineer nature or his bizarre inventions. Also prominent were plots based on Dogbert's megalomaniacal ambitions. Later, the location of most of the action moved to Dilbert's workplace and the strip started to satirize technology, workplace, and company issues. The comic strip's popular success is attributable to its workplace setting and themes, which are familiar to a large and appreciative audience; Adams has said that switching the setting from Dilbert's home to his office was "when the strip really started to take off". The workplace location is Silicon Valley.

Dilbert portrays corporate culture as a Kafkaesque world of bureaucracy for its own sake and office politics that stand in the way of productivity, where employees' skills and efforts are not rewarded, and busy work is praised. Much of the humor emerges as the audience sees the characters making obviously ridiculous decisions that are natural reactions to mismanagement.

Dilbert

The main character in the strip, Dilbert is a stereotypical technically-minded single male. Until October 2014, he was usually depicted wearing a white dress shirt, black trousers and a red-and-black striped tie that inexplicably curves upward; after October 13, 2014, his standard apparel changed to a red polo shirt with a name badge on a lanyard around his neck. Dilbert is a skilled engineer but has a poor social and romantic life.

Pointy-Haired Boss

The unnamed, oblivious manager of the engineering division of Dilbert's company. Scott Adams states that he never named him so that people can imagine him to be their boss. In earlier strips he was depicted as a stereotypical late-middle-aged balding middle manager with jowls; it was not until later that he developed his signature "pointy hair" and the jowls disappeared. He is hopelessly incompetent at management, and often tries to compensate for his lack of skills with countless group therapy sessions and business strategies which usually never bear fruit. He does not understand technical issues but always tries to disguise this, usually by using buzzwords he also does not understand. The Boss treats his employees alternately with enthusiasm or neglect; he often uses them to his own ends regardless of the consequences to them. Adams himself wrote that "He's not sadistic, just uncaring". His level of intelligence varies from near-vegetative to perceptive and clever, depending on the strip's comic needs. His utter lack of consistent business ethics, however, is perfectly consistent. His brother is a demon named "Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light", and according to Adams, the pointy hair is intended to remind one of devil's horns.

Wally

One of the oldest engineers, Wally was originally a worker trying to get fired to get a severance package. He hates work and avoids it whenever he can. He often carries a cup of coffee, calmly sipping from it even in the midst of chaos or office-shaking revelations. Wally is extremely cynical. He is even more socially inept than Dilbert (though far less self-aware of the fact), and references to his lack of personal hygiene are not uncommon. Like the Pointy-Haired Boss, Wally is utterly lacking in ethics and will take advantage of any situation to maximize his personal gain while doing the least possible amount of honest work. Squat and balding, Wally is almost invariably portrayed wearing a short sleeved dress shirt and tie. Adams has stated that Wally was based on a Pacific Bell coworker of his who was interested in a generous employee buy-out program—for the company's worst employees. This had the effect of causing this man—whom Adams describes as "one of the more brilliant people I've met"—to work hard at being incompetent, rude, and generally poor at his job to qualify for the buy-out program. Adams has said that this inspired the basic laziness and amorality of Wally's character. Despite these personality traits Wally is accepted as part of Dilbert, Ted, Alice, and Asok's clique. Although his relationship with Alice is often antagonistic and Dilbert occasionally denies being his friend, their actions show at least a certain acceptance of him.

Alice

One of the more competent engineers. She is often frustrated at her work, because she does not get proper recognition, which she believes is because she is female, though in reality it is likely because she has a quick, often violent temper, sometimes putting her "Fist of Death" to use, even with the Pointy-Haired Boss. Alice is based on a woman that Scott Adams worked with named Anita, who is described as sharing Alice's "pink suit, fluffy hair, technical proficiency, coffee obsession, and take-no-crap attitude."

Dogbert

Dilbert's anthropomorphic pet dog is the smartest dog on Earth. Dogbert is a megalomaniac intellectual dog, planning to one day conquer the world. He once succeeded, but became bored with the ensuing peace, and quit. Often seen in high-ranking consultant or technical support jobs, he constantly abuses his power and fools the management of Dilbert's company, though considering the intelligence of the company's management in general and Dilbert's boss in particular, this is not very hard to do. He also enjoys pulling scams on unsuspecting and usually dull customers to steal their money. However, despite Dogbert's cynical exterior, he has been known to pull his master out of some tight jams. Dogbert's nature as a pet was more emphasized during the earlier years of the strip; as the strip progressed, references to his acting like a dog became less common, although he still wags his tail when he perpetrates his scams. When an older Dilbert arrives while time-traveling from the future, he refers to Dogbert as "majesty", indicating that Dogbert will one day indeed rule the world...again, and make worshipping him retroactive so he could boss around time travelers.

Catbert

Catbert is a fictional cat, and the "evil director of human resources" in the Dilbert comic strip. He was supposed to be a one-time character but resonated with readers so well that Adams brought him back as the HR director.

Asok

A young intern, he works very hard but does not always get proper recognition. Asok is intensely intelligent but naive about corporate life; the shattering of his optimistic illusions becomes frequent comic fodder. He is Indian, and has graduated from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). The other workers, especially the boss, often unwittingly trample on his cultural beliefs. On the occasions when Asok mentions this, he is normally ignored. His test scores (a perfect 1600 on the old SAT) and his IQ of 240 show that he is the smartest member of the engineering team. Nonetheless he is often called upon by the Boss to do odd jobs, and in meetings his ideas are usually left hanging. He is also seen regularly at the lunch table with Wally and Dilbert, experiencing jarring realizations of the nature of corporate life. There are a few jokes about his psychic powers, which he learned at the IIT. Yet despite his intelligence, ethics and mystical powers, Asok sometimes takes advice from Wally in the arts of laziness, and from Dilbert in surviving the office. As of February 7, 2014, Asok is officially gay, which never impacts any storylines but merely commemorates a decision by the Indian Supreme Court to uphold an anti-gay law.

Ted

An engineer who is often seen hanging out with Wally. He is referenced by name more often in older comics, but he is still seen occasionally now. He is a friend of Dilbert and Wally, but is not seen interacting with Alice or Asok as much. He has been accepted into Dilbert's clique. He has been fired and killed numerous times (for example, being pushed down a flight of stairs and becoming possessed), so it is likely that he is rehired and brought back to life in a similar way to the other main characters who die and come back. In addition to this, he is often promoted and given benefits over the other employees. Ted has a wife and kids who are referenced multiple times and seen on at least one occasion. Scott Adams refers to him as Ted the Generic Guy because whenever Scott needs to fire or kill someone, he uses Ted, but slowly over time Ted has become his own character.

Legacy

The popularity of the comic strip within the corporate sector has led to the Dilbert character being used in many business magazines and publications, including several appearances on the cover of Fortune Magazine. Many newspapers run the comic in their business section rather than in the regular comics section (similar to the way that Doonesbury is often featured in the editorial section, due to its pointed commentary).

Criticism and parody

Media analyst Norman Solomon and cartoonist Tom Tomorrow claim that Adams's caricatures of corporate culture seem to project empathy for white-collar workers, but the satire ultimately plays into the hands of upper corporate management itself. Solomon describes the characters of Dilbert as dysfunctional time-wasters, none of whom occupies a position higher than middle management, and whose inefficiencies detract from corporate values such as 'productivity' and 'growth'. Dilbert and his office-mates often find themselves baffled or victimized by the whims of managerial behavior, but they never seem to question it openly. Solomon cites the Xerox corporation's use of Dilbert strips and characters in internally distributed 'inspirational' pamphlets:

"Xerox management had recognized what more gullible Dilbert readers did not: Dilbert is an offbeat sugary substance that helps the corporate medicine go down. The Dilbert phenomenon accepts—and perversely eggs on—many negative aspects of corporate existence as unchangeable facets of human nature...As Xerox managers grasped, Dilbert speaks to some very real work experiences while simultaneously eroding inclinations to fight for better working conditions."

Adams responded in the February 2, 1998 strip and in his book The Joy of Work, simply by restating Solomon's argument, apparently suggesting that it was absurd and required no rebuttal.

In 1997, Tom Vanderbilt wrote in a similar vein in The Baffler magazine:

"Labor unions haven't adopted Dilbert characters as insignia. But corporations in droves have rushed to link themselves with Dilbert. Why? Dilbert mirrors the mass media's crocodile tears for working people—and echoes the ambient noises from Wall Street."

In 1998, Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead, chided Dilbert for crude drawings and simplistic humor. He wrote, "Long since psychically kidnapped by the gaudy, mindlessly hyperactive world of TV, (readers) no longer demand or expect comic strips to be compelling, challenging, or even interesting. Enter 'Cathy'. And 'Dilbert.' Sure, comics are still funny. It’s just that the humor has almost no 'nutritional' value. In the tiny space alloted to them, daily strips have all too successfully adapted to their new environment. In this Darwinian set-up, what thrives are simply drawn panels , minimal dialogue, and a lot of head-and-shoulder shots. Anything more complicated is deemed 'too hard to read.' A full, rich drawing style is a drawback. Simplicity, even crudity, rules." Adams lashed back with a comic strip called Pippy the Ziphead, "cramming as much artwork in as possible so no one will notice there's only one joke...[and] it's on the reader." Dilbert notes that the strip is "nothing but a clown with a small head who says random things", and Dogbert responds that he is "maintaining his artistic integrity by creating a comic that no one will enjoy." In September of the same year, Griffith mocked Adams by mimicking his Pippy the Ziphead creation with a strip showing stiff, Dilbert-like creations in an office setting and one of the characters saying, "I sense a joke was delivered".

In the late 1990s, an amateur cartoonist named Karl Hörnell began submitting a comic strip to Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen which parodied both Dilbert and the Image Comics series The Savage Dragon. This soon became a regular feature in the Savage Dragon comic book, titled The Savage Dragonbert and Hitler's Brainbert ("Hitler's Brainbert" being a loose parody of both Dogbert and the Savage Dragon villain identified as Adolf Hitler's disembodied, superpowered brain). The strip began as a specific parody of the comic book itself, set loosely within the office structure of Dilbert, with Hörnell doing an emulation of Adams's cartooning style.

Language

Adams has invented words which have become popular among fans in describing their own office environments, such as "Induhvidual". This term is based on the American English slang expression "duh!" The conscious misspelling of individual as induhvidual is a pejorative term for people who are not in Dogbert's New Ruling Class (DNRC). Its coining is explained in Dilbert Newsletter #6. The strip has also popularized the usage of the terms "cow-orker" and PHB.

Management

In 1997, Scott Adams masqueraded as a management consultant to Logitech executives (as Ray Mebert), with the cooperation of the company's vice-chairman. He acted in much the way that he portrays management consultants in the comic strip, with an arrogant manner and bizarre suggestions, such as comparing mission statements to broccoli soup. He convinced the executives to change their existing mission statement for their New Ventures Group from "provide Logitech with profitable growth and related new business areas" to "scout profitable growth opportunities in relationships, both internally and externally, in emerging, mission-inclusive markets, and explore new paradigms and then filter and communicate and evangelize the findings".

To demonstrate what can be achieved with the most mundane objects if planned correctly and imaginatively, Adams has worked with companies to develop "dream" products for Dilbert and company. In 2001, he collaborated with design company IDEO to come up with the "perfect cubicle", a fitting creation since many of the Dilbert strips make fun of the standard cubicle desk and the environment which it creates. The result was both whimsical and practical.

This project was followed in 2004 with designs for Dilbert's Ultimate House (abbreviated as DUH). An energy-efficient building was the result, designed to prevent many of the little problems that seem to creep into a normal building. For instance, to save time spent buying and decorating a Christmas tree every year, the house has a large (yet unapparent) closet adjacent to the living room where the tree can be stored from year to year.

Webcomics

In 1995, Dilbert was the first syndicated comic strip to be published for free on the Internet. Putting his e-mail address in each Dilbert strip, Adams created a "direct channel to [his] customers," allowing him to modify the strip based on their feedback. Joe Zabel stated that Dilbert had a large influence on many of the webcomics that followed it, establishing the "nerdcore" genre as it found its audience.

In April 2008, Scott Adams announced that United Media would be instituting an interactive feature on Dilbert.com, allowing fans to write speech bubbles and, in the near future, interact with Adams about the content of the strips. Adams has spoken positively about the change, saying, "This makes cartooning a competitive sport."

Awards

In addition to the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Awards won by Adams, the Dilbert strip has received a variety of other awards. Adams was named best international comic strip artist of 1995 in the Adamson Awards given by the Swedish Academy of Comic Art.

Dilbert was named the best syndicated strip of 1997 in the Harvey Awards and won the Max & Moritz Prize as best international comic strip for 1998.

Business books

Other books

Merchandise

Animated series

Dilbert was adapted into a UPN animated television series starring Daniel Stern as Dilbert, Chris Elliott as Dogbert, and Kathy Griffin as Alice. The series ran for two seasons from January 25, 1999 to July 25, 2000. The first season centered around the creation of a new product called the "Gruntmaster 6000". It was critically acclaimed and won a Golden Globe award, leading to its renewal for a second season. The second season did away with the serial format and was composed entirely of standalone episodes, many of which shifted focus away from the workplace and involved absurdist plots such as Wally being mistaken for a religious leader ("The Shroud of Wally") and Dilbert being accused of mass murder ("The Trial"). Critical and fan reception was resoundingly negative to the change in format and storytelling, and the series was not renewed for a third season. The second season two-episode finale included Dilbert getting pregnant with the child of a cow, a hillbilly, Robot DNA, "several dozen engineers", an elderly billionaire, and an alien, eventually ending up in a custody battle with Stone Cold Steve Austin as the Judge.

New animation

On April 7, 2008, dilbert.com presented its first Dilbert animation. The new Dilbert animations are animated versions of original comic strips produced by RingTales and animated by Powerhouse Animation Studios. The animation videos run for around 30 seconds each and are added every weekday. On December 10, 2009 the RingTales produced animations were made available as a calendar application for mobile devices.

"Drunken lemurs" case

In October 2007, the Catfish Bend Casino in Burlington, Iowa notified its staff that the casino was closing and they were going to be laid off. David Steward, an employee of seven years, then posted on an office bulletin board the Dilbert strip of October 26, 2007 that compared management decisions to those of "drunken lemurs". The casino called this "very offensive"; they identified him from a surveillance tape, fired him, and tried to prevent him from receiving unemployment insurance benefits. However, an administrative law judge ruled in December 2007 that he would receive benefits, as his action was not intentional misbehavior. Scott Adams said that it might be the first confirmed case of an employee being fired for posting a Dilbert cartoon. On February 20, 2008, the first of a series of Dilbert strips showed Wally being caught posting a comic strip which "compares managers to drunken lemurs". Adams later said that fans should stick to posting Garfield strips, as no one gets fired for that.

Guest artists

On February 29, 2016, Adams posted on his blog that he would be taking a six-week vacation. During that time, strips would be written by him but drawn by guest artists who work for Universal Uclick. Jake Tapper drew the strip on the week on May 23.