Review of
Seven
Years of Highly Defective People: Scott Adams’ Guided Tour of the Evolution of
Dilbert, by Scott Adams ISBN 0836236688
Five out of five stars
No comic strip
is more popular than Dilbert among the people that inhabit an office full of
humans in order to earn their daily bread. No one is able to capture the wide
range of frustrations among the office population as well as Scott Adams. Every
strip that you read contains a kernel of truth, often negative, about life in
the cubicle lane. Therefore, each collection of Dilbert strips is a treasure,
humorous, but often in the darker sense.
What makes this
collection much more interesting is that the strips are annotated with Adams’
notes regarding how he developed the character featured in the section. There
is a section for each of the main characters as well as shorted ones for the
minor characters. The book is a peek into the thought processes of Adams as he
thinks through the evolution of the characters.
The first
section that I opened to was the one about the pointy-haired boss. It was
interesting to see that at first, the boss was bald on top but with a ring of
hair. Only later was he drawn with the distinctive matching hair-horns. My
favorite strip of all-time is on page 197 and is the one where the boss
confuses “eunuch programmers” with “Unix programmers.”
This is a great
book, many times, seeing inside the development of humor can reduce the level
of effectiveness. Here, the insight into the jokes enhances them considerably.
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