Pre-Owned Seven Years of Highly Defective People: Scott Adams' Guided Tour of the Evolution of Dilbert (Paperback) 0836236688 9780836236682

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.