Dilbert

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dilbert is a comic strip written by Scott Adams .

The strip takes place mainly in a fictional company that manufactures technical products, the exact type of which is never explicitly stated, but which are completely unsuitable ("Our product comes off worst in our own benchmark tests"). Since Dilbert and at least his colleagues Alice and Asok are excellent engineers who solve technical problems in the blink of an eye, the company's failure can only be traced back to incompetent management. The content of the strip is the conflicts, frictions and misunderstandings of everyday work.

main characters

Dilbert
Employed programmer , software developer and middle-aged engineer , whose high technical skills are, however, overwhelmed by the structures of the company. In his private life he is involuntarily single; any attempt to contact women fails because of their lack of romance. Its distinguishing feature is the wavy, skin-colored skullcap. Until October 2014, he also wore a red and black tie that was always bent upwards over a white short-sleeved shirt. Since the new dress code business dorky was ordered, Dilbert has been wearing a red polo shirt and a lanyard with ID around his neck. In contrast to other characters, his face almost never has a mouth in the comic.
Alice
A technically excellent, but always overworked and irascible engineer, who intersperses her point of view with intimidation, sarcasms, insults or even brute force - her "death fist" punches holes in the bodies of other characters. Her hallmark is a triangular brunette curly hairstyle.
Wally
An older, bespectacled, bespectacled, bald-headed employee with three hairs behind each auricle, who drinks large quantities of coffee and otherwise quite openly shuns any work or responsibility. He finds elaborate explanations for his projects never progressing and expresses his disrespectful attitudes towards the company and the management with a lot of cynicism .
Asok
The Indian intern, depicted with a darker complexion , has the highest level of intelligence, outstanding technical skills and also some magical skills such as telekinesis . His good ideas as well as his attempts to adapt, however, always fail because of his low position as an intern, his lack of self-confidence and the inability of his manager to recognize talent.
The boss
the main characters have no names in the comic. The readership has given him the nickname Pointy Haired Boss , or PHB for short, because of his hairline that stands up like a drop from every angle . Not only does he have a complete lack of technical understanding, he also shows no real leadership qualities. He considers it good leadership to arbitrarily order senseless measures and makes unfulfillable demands on his team without even understanding its work in the least. Technical gadgets inspire him, but he is overwhelmed with their handling.

More figures

  • Carol, the secretary of the PHB, hates her superiors and all other employees and makes life difficult for them wherever she can. Despite having a Masters in Business Administration ( MBA ), the PHB made it clear that she will never be promoted above the rank of secretary.
  • The technical editor Tina always feels personally attacked when asked about her work or deadlines to be met.
  • The employee Ted serves as a universal filler when another person is required for a strip.
  • Leading people above the PHB are usually shown with extremely tall bald heads. They are only interested in business results and have no technical knowledge of their operations.

Some figures appear only sporadically, but repeatedly:

  • Medical Mel, bothering everyone around him with the details of his numerous illnesses being recited aloud
  • Topper, who is subject to an inner compulsion to have to outbid ("top") every statement made by someone else in a conversation, which leads to the most absurd exaggerations.
  • Dilbert's mother, Dilmom
  • the hyper-intelligent garbage man / janitor
  • the demon Phil ("The Prince Of Insufficient Light"). According to his own statement, “not allowed for the devil's work”, he punishes irrelevant mistakes with irrelevant penalties. Instead of a devil's fork, he carries a large spoon with which he can rarely do anything.

In the comic there are talking animals, some of which are integrated into the human working world.

  • The human resources department at Dilbert's company is headed by Catbert, a cat whose sole aim is to enslave and suppress its employees.
  • Dogbert, Dilbert's dog, like Catbert, despises all people, but especially Dilbert. His goal is world domination and the enslavement of all people, which he makes no secret of. He often appears as an external consultant for the company, where he collects huge fees and humiliates his course participants.
  • The rat Ratbert is the most good-natured of animals. Ratbert is a naive optimist who seeks approval from everyone and is repeatedly abused as an experimental animal.
  • The green dinosaur Bob

The fact that dogs and cats are the self-declared enemies of humans, while the rat is the lovable animal, is in contrast to the usual social animal roles.

Elbonia

Elbonia is a fictional Eastern European "fourth world country" in the Dilbert universe. It is populated by men with full black beards and high, eye-covering fur hats, you are always belly-deep in the mud and the economic inflation is enormous. Occasionally, entire strips play in Elbonia, more often Elbonia is only mentioned, or individual Elbonians end up in Dilbert's habitat.

The cooperation between Dilbert's company and Elbonien parodies the trend towards outsourcing to cheap countries with cheap workers. In terms of product economics, the cooperation with Elbonia does not make any sense. The peculiarities of the Elbonian culture give rise to major and sometimes life-threatening conflicts.

Origin and publication history

In 1989 Adams developed the character Dilbert, and in 1993 Dilbert first appeared in a local US newspaper. The comic strips were first distributed by United Feature Syndicate , since 2011 by Universal Uclick and appear in around 2000 daily newspapers worldwide. Dilbert was the first syndicated internet comic in 1995 . An e-mail newsletter and a free plug-in for Mozilla Firefox for the daily Dilbert comic strip are available. The German-speaking syndication rights are held by Bulls Press .

A new strip with three panels appears on the website every weekday , the plot of which can stand in isolation or extend over several days as a continuation. On Sundays, a larger strip of eight panels appears in two lines with a completed plot that is not linked to the surrounding weekday strips.

In 2001 Scott Adams hired the design company IDEO to develop the perfect cubicle for Dilbert.

In April 2008 the website was converted to Flash . After violent protests from the readership, an additional Flash-free version was set up.

Dilbert comics and others appear in Germany. a. in the online edition of VDI nachrichten , the member's journal of the Association of German Engineers , and on the website of the Süddeutsche Zeitung .

Books (selection)

Television series

Adams produced a Dilbert animated television series in collaboration with Larry Charles. The series includes 30 episodes that were broadcast in two seasons (US first broadcast 1999 to 2000). It is available on DVD in the USA and was broadcast in Germany on the pay-TV channel Premiere and the cable channel Tele 5 . The series has been on the market in a complete DVD box in German since the end of May 2016.

Substitute draftsman in March 2016

At the end of February 2016, Scott Adams explained why the drawings published daily have a different drawing style for six weeks: Since his hand needs rest and rehabilitation, a replacement draftsman will work for him for the next six weeks.

Coronavirus

During the Corona period, Dilbert's comic strips pick up on the current situation, for example by wearing a mask, and also make it a major issue.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Scott Adams: Dilbert Strip, June 30, 2010. Accessed May 6, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Dilbert Strip, October 12, 1990
  3. ↑ Dilbert Strip, October 13, 2014
  4. ↑ Dilbert Strip, December 13, 2006
  5. ^ Dilbert Strip, September 15, 2008
  6. ↑ Dilbert Strip, October 17, 2010
  7. ^ Dilbert Strip, August 28, 2010
  8. ↑ In a series in March 2006, the development of an MP3 player was transferred to the Elboners for cost reasons. The misshapen prototype was the size of a tractor and only played Elbon polkas. The problem of unsaleability was passed on to marketing .
  9. ↑ Dilbert Strip of July 16, 2018 and following
  10. ^ Porter Anderson: Fred Dust: Designing for Dilbert , CNN Career. August 28, 2001. Retrieved March 10, 2007. 
  11. ↑ Porter Anderson: Scott Adams: Dilbert's Ultimate Cubicle , CNN Career. August 28, 2001. Retrieved March 10, 2007. 
  12. ↑ timothy: Dilbert Goes Flash, Readers Revolt. In: Slashdot . April 19, 2008, accessed May 6, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Torsten Kleinz: Dilbert: Back from Elbonia. In: heise online. April 25, 2008, accessed May 6, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Scott Adams: Dilbert.com Redesign. In: Scott Adams' blog. April 25, 2008, accessed on May 6, 2020 (English, original ).
  15. ↑ Current Dilbert Comics on ingenieur.de. In: ingenieur.de. VDI Verlag, May 6, 2020, accessed on May 6, 2020 .
  16. ^ Dilbert, Peanuts & Co. In: sueddeutsche.de. Süddeutsche Zeitung, accessed on May 6, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Dilbert. In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved May 6, 2020 .
  18. ^ Dilbert - The Complete Series (DVD). In: Weltbild.de. Retrieved May 6, 2020 .
  19. ^ Scott Adams, Dilbert's Changed Look Explained. In: Scott Adams' blog. February 29, 2016, accessed May 6, 2020 .
  20. ↑ https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/comics-peanuts-dilbert-realitycheck-1.4926666,https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/comics-dilbert-peanuts-reality-check-1.4917052 https: // www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/comics-dilbert-peanuts-reality-check-1.4907371,https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/comics-dilbert-peanuts-reality-check-1.4917052 https: //www.sueddeutsche .de / culture / comics-dilbert-peanuts-reality-check-1.4907371 Examples of comic strips with Corona, accessed on June 4