Did your paper show today's Dilbert?

Cafe Society
#1

This a.m. the Chicago Trib said today’s Dilbert did not meet their “standards for taste”, so they were running a substitute strip. So of course I had to check out the Dilbert Zone to see what I was missing.

And it was pretty distasteful. While I remember the odd Boondocks or Doonesbury being omitted for various reasons, I did not remember them being for “taste.”

Did your paper show the original “skunk” Dilbert, or the substituted “sublease” strip?
Any idea where the substitute strip came from? Was it a reprint of an old strip?

The skunk Dilbert strikes me as a little more “didtasteful” than is common for Dilbert. Anyone agree or think I’m mistaken?

#2

The New Jersey Record ran the stinky strip. But they have never censored anything that I know of, even running the Doonesbury “Son of a Bitch.”

#3

Really, Adams needs to retire before he becomes Jim Davis. That is just awful and not funny. I read some of the archive strips – pretty much Dilbert seems to be in a creative lull to put it kindly. It has reached a level of outright suckage few strips aspire to.

Too bad, in its prime it was king.

#4

The Washington Post ran the strip with ‘stinky Pete’, or whatever he was called. I didn’t think it was especially tasteless or funny. (One of my favorite Dilbert strips was from a few years back: Dilbert’s boss announced he was getting a cubicle mate. As Dilbert though, “Oh well, how bad could it be”, a great big guy wearing a cowboy hat and carrying a boombox and a big can of beans entered, announcing, “I hope you like baked beans and square dance music as much as I do!”)

#5

As Dilbert thought…

#6

I guess I’m not plugged into the Dilbert-verse enough. Is Stinky Pete a recurring character? I don’t recall seeing him before. I guess my take on it is: gross, and yet not funny.

Strange how it’s usually the unfunny and confusing strips that always draw people’s ire.

#7


I don’t find it particularly distasteful, it’s just bad.

#8

But…but the strip has the word “buttocks” in it! It’s a laff riot!!

Someday, Scott Adams will be on par with Bil Keane and Cathy Guisewite. He will then be a Sequential Art God and look down upon all of us from his seat at the right hand of Charles Schulz.

#9

Stinky Pete was introduced last week. He is just a character that Adams thought was funny. Basically most of us have run across a coworker who needs a clue about hygiene. He is missing the mark as far as humor goes, but I didn’t find it too tasteless.

Very very few comic strips are funny every day. I’m pleased if I get a smile from one of them once a day.

#10

We got the stinky strip here. Meh.

#11

Yeah, just not funny at all really.

#12

I have worked with people who would have smelled better had they rolled in sewage. I agree, not funny, but not offensive either.

#13

I agree. It’s not in particularly bad taste, it’s just not funny.

#14

Same here.

#15

Oddly, yes, the Arab News ran it.

#16

Joining in on the chorus. Not funny, a little gross, but not bad enough on either scale to really make sense to be scrubbed.

#17

You are so going to Sequential Art Hell for this comparison. There, you can look forward to an eternity with Cathy Guisewite and Bil Keane. Unless you pray to Charles Schulz for mercy, right now.

#18

Absolutely. I’ve been thinking for several months that he seems to be running out of any clever ideas.

Too bad, as he used to break me up, having had a couple of bosses as bad as ol’ pointy hair.

It is always astonishing that any cartoonist can think up good stuff day after day for years. Some do, some don’t.

I think it was Ring Lardner who wrote about doing a daily column, “It’s easy. You just put a piece of paper in the typewriter and stare at it until little beads of blood appear on your forehead,” or words to that effect.

#19

Charles Scultz once described a cartoonist as “Someone who has to do the same thing day after day without repeating himself.”

#20

Kinda crude, but I wouldn’t call it offensive. Not very funny. Overall, I’ve got to say that Dilbert’s glory days are definitely behind it. And I hate to say it, but Adams is a one-trick pony. Whenever he tries to make jokes about something non-work-related, the strip is inevitably a dud. Especially love and relationships. Those strips are usually painfully bad.