The May 9th Dilbert concerns Wally being sent to jail for impersonating a client (who had died because Alice threw her computer off the side of the building, killing him instantly).
But I don’t get the alternative ending. I’m missing something, dammit! And I pride myself on my sense of humor. (Anyone with my looks has to have one! :))
Wally is suggesting that he will not be able to “go” if his cellmate can see and/or hear him. Note the toilet in the background. This fits in with Wally’s “wuss” persona.
Sorry, Spavined Gelding. I guess you need to visit the first link, then go to the second from the first.
Ah, I should have realized it. Bathroom humor! But why would that be so bad that they couldn’t print it in the daily papers? Do people still get that riled over bathroom jokes in the comics? (Never mind that in some papers, that strip’s in the Business section, where ostensibly more mature people are reading the thing than your everyday 14-year-old…)
I think the published version is funnier, too, Smeghead. Another possibility to consider is that the alternate version has the potential for being misunderstood. I confess that before I noticed the toilet in the picture, my mind had started wandering toward the conclusion that Wally was referring to his need to gratify other … um … urges.
The answer is, quite simply, yes. We had another “web-only” Dilbert a month or two back that showed the top of a character’s butt-crack. It was web-only because some newspapers didn’t want to run it.
Remember that large portions of our nation are a lot more easily offended than we are. Lamentable, perhaps, but there you are.
Also, for what it’s worth, someone had to explain the toilet one to me, too.
Wow, thanks! Thank you very much, vix! Pays to know people, apparently.
Anyway, it makes sense to me that it would be Web-only; it’s a lot easier for people to skip the comic if they so choose. They have to actively seek out the strip to view it, while the printed one is tossed in with all the other daily strips, and the eye will wander over to it, bad taste or not.
Ah, I wasn’t sure what the deal was for a moment there. When I clicked on it in my post, I got that page not found screen. Then I checked the url, and sure enough, boards.straightdope.com had been added. “Hmmmm,” I thought. “Why did it do that?” “Simple,” I replied. “You didn’t have an “http:” at the beginning of the url. So the system added the domain you were already on, which was (surprise!) the SDMB.”
You’d be surprised. In one of his books, The Joy of Work, Scott Adams shows some of his comics that some newspapers wouldn’t print. The offensive material? One used the word “sucked” and the other used “hiney”. Real earth-shattering depravity there. :rolleyes: