Any Dilbert expert here? I want to read Dilbert. Where should I start?

[Red Bear]

I've never read Dilbert, but a friend of mine sometimes talks about it and I think I'll like it, but he couldn't tell me where is a good place to start.
Thoughts?

[Mando Knight]

As in the newspaper comic? You could start by buying your local newspaper. Or you could start here.

Either way, don't worry too much about "missing something." It's a gag-a-day strip that somewhat frequently has weekly themes (i.e. Elbonian shareholders, start-ups, whatever), but each strip is basically self-contained. Recurring characters have simple personalities (Dilbert's an cynical and underpaid/overworked engineer, Wally is the super-lazy coworker who somehow never gets fired, the Pointy-Haired Boss is completely incompetent, etc.), and it doesn't take long to figure out who's who.

[Kornaki]

Yeah, you can basically jump in wherever. The whole archive of comics is online

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1989-04-16/

(this is the first online strip, I don't actually know if it's the first one though).

[Douglas]

The main dilbert.com site is overburdened with fancy stuff and atrociously slow as a result. I recommend using dilbert.com/fast instead. Starting from the beginning, here is the fast version of Kornaki's link.

Wally is the super-lazy coworker who somehow never gets fired

Interesting back story I've read about Wally: his character was inspired by a real life friend or coworker of the author, who wanted to quit but found the severance package would be better if he was fired. This friend/coworker therefore set about deliberately trying to get himself fired, and found that it was astounding how much laziness and incompetence he could get away with.

[Kislath]

THANKS, Douglas!! The main website is so slow that it drove me to tears. This fast version is SO much better.

Red Bear, you're in for a treat. You've got 25 years' worth of comics to read, but the fact it's still running after 25 years tells you how good it is, right? It evolves over time in art style, and characters come and go, but the funny never stops.

[Red Bear]

The main dilbert.com site is overburdened with fancy stuff and atrociously slow as a result. I recommend using dilbert.com/fast instead. Starting from the beginning, here is the fast version of Kornaki's link.

Thank you for the Fast link.

Thanks to everyone for your answers.

[Knaight]

THANKS, Douglas!! The main website is so slow that it drove me to tears. This fast version is SO much better.

Red Bear, you're in for a treat. You've got 25 years' worth of comics to read, but the fact it's still running after 25 years tells you how good it is, right? It evolves over time in art style, and characters come and go, but the funny never stops.

There are some pretty terrible comics which had long runs. Dilbert's decent (though Scott Adams really comes off as a tool), but Family Circus has been running continually for 54 years, which is pretty inconsistent with a long run as a sign of quality. It's hardly the only one as well.

[Traab]

If you like office humor you will love dilbert. It frequently goes way off from that into the realm of the absurd, but its generally a very enjoyable comic. I have half a bookshelf devoted to his comic books.

[Gnoman]

Having read through the entire archive recently, the comic is very repetitive (the same jokes are sometimes used seven or eight times, sometimes with different buzzwords). This isn't due as much to author laziness as the fact that the source of his jokes hasn't changed.

[Rodin]

I have a weird relationship with Dilbert. Every year as a tradition I get my Dad the calendar for Christmas. He'll then save the daily comics and I read them whenever I visit (about once or twice a week).

Since the calendars are just old strips, I can't go on an archive binge, because that means that I'll have read all the calendar comics. So I just...don't read the new stuff off the website. This means that I rarely see a strip I'm familiar with, and between the new strips and about a 10-year period where I didn't read at all there's enough that it's new every day.

[Vinyadan]

I think anywhere's good. There's also a mobile app, I think.

[Skorj]

If you like office humor you will love dilbert. It frequently goes way off from that into the realm of the absurd, but its generally a very enjoyable comic. I have half a bookshelf devoted to his comic books.

I liked Dilbert best in the early years - before he went to work, and the first year or so of work humor. After that the good jokes became sparse and the humor repetitive IMO (though the same could be said of much of the last book before we saw Dilbert's job - it was time to change up the comic). I'm glad the online comic archive goes back somewhere into the pre-work books, great excuse to read the early stuff again!

[Kislath]

Every time I hear that new song by Weird Al called "Mission Statement," I think of Dilbert.
The Dilbert gang should totally be used to make a video for that song.

[SaintRidley]

A job which could be made very easy by the existence of a Dilbert TV show.

[Kislath]

I've got that on DVD. :) Asok is pretty much replaced by Loud Howard. Kinda annoying, but the show is great, and it's nice to finally hear the voices.

[TheEmerged]

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1991-12-26/

That particular strip figures into something that happened in a previous place of employment. Management caught the 'empowerment' craze right around the time this series of strips was running, which also happened to be right around the time Dilbert started running in the local papers. After a division-wide meeting where 'empowerment' was the huge theme, somebody posted that strip in the lunch room (and on a bulletin board where people regularly did this sort of thing).

Now, when I say "somebody", I know exactly who it was - and it is not me, just to be clear. What's more, probably 60-75 percent of the people in the office knew who it was too, since she posted it during lunch and many of us had a good laugh about it.

However, management got *hot* under the collar about it. They not only took it down, but went around making everyone take anything Dilbert related off the walls/bulletin boards. They then started bring us into HR in small groups demanding to know who had posted it. By the time I was in such a meeting they were visibly frustrated (I'm talking sweating, red-skins, bulging eyes visibly) and threatening to start firing people unless someone confessed or stated who had posted it (and job market in the area in 1991 was worse than it is now).

Needless to say, no one said anything. Calmer heads prevailed - if office scuttlebutt is to be believed, someone from corporate had to basically threaten to fire the division head if he didn't stop because he was on the verge of making the company look stupid. Either way, the office was soon half-covered in Dilbert paraphernalia...

[Traab]

Heh, that reminds me of another dilbert comic where the company fires a guy writing dilbert style joke comics at the office.

"We have to fire you because you are insulting management and making us look like jokes."

"Because then i would insult you LESS?"

[Rodin]

Heh, that reminds me of another dilbert comic where the company fires a guy writing dilbert style joke comics at the office.

"We have to fire you because you are insulting management and making us look like jokes."

"Because then i would insult you LESS?"

There actually was a comic comparing management to drunken lemurs that got someone fired, and when Scott Adams heard about it he wrote another series of comics mocking it:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-02-20/

The circular "Dilbert creating its own material" effect never ceases to amuse me.

[Kislath]

That's why Dilbert is so funny-- it's TRUE!