“Dilbert readers tend to be far above
average in intelligence,” said Dilbert creator
Scott Adams in a telcon with
Christine Galt at the Omaha World-Herald,
and, he went on, the e-mail he receives from them — which inspires much of the
strip’s humor — reflects that. “It’s rarely boring,” he said. The commemorative
20th anniversary tome from Andrews McMeel (576 pages, $85), Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert,
includes a quantity of commentary, and Adams
also tells, for the first time at length, how he became a cartoonist. “The
short version is that my job was a dead-end so I bought a book on how to become
a cartoonist, hoping I might make a few bucks on the side. The actual process
[of getting syndicated] is as simple as drawing sample comics and mailing them
to publishers listed in the book. When United Media saw my submission, they
called and offered me a contract to become a syndicated cartoonist. That’s the
short version. The longer version has the juicy stuff,” he finished with a
peddler’s pander.
Dilbert
appears in more than 2,000 newspapers in 70 countries in 23 languages; more
than 20 million Dilbert books have been sold; Dilbert.com attracts 1.4 million
visitors per month with 15 million page views each month. One of the features
of the website is “True Tales of InDUHviduals,” the people “who put the duh in
induhviduals. Here’s one, a dialogue between “Me” and “My Hairdresser”:
Me: I’m
surprised the kids get Columbus Day off from school.
My Hairdresser: Yeah, I
thought all of the presidents were celebrated on the same day.
Me: [nothing].
This engaging and informative
feature is usually followed with “True Quotes from InDUHviduals,” which includes
such mutilations of common expressions as these: Please feel free to jump in if I’m right. That’s just a
whole different ball of fish. We’re between a pickle and a hard spot. You
better get on the boat, ’cause this train’s leavin’ the station. I’m just
talking out loud here.
Wonderful.
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