Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert by Scott Adams
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Book Reviews of Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert
Book Review: Is it really 20 years?!
Summary: 4 Stars
Dilbert has always seemed like a 'new' comic to me so it's quite a shock to find it's been 20 years. However for someone who left the corporate world in 2002 I've found this book invaluable not just to catch up on the last few years but also to remind myself why I left in the first place.
The introduction alone had me laughing, but it's very interesting to see a glimpse behind the curtain. Usually we never get to see how ultra-successful people in life REALLY did it. Having (finally) finished the book I can say that it definitely gets funnier as it goes along, to the point where I had to get up and allow my stomach to recover from laughing at the spinning business founder as generator one. But all these strips are available for free on the website, so why did I buy it?
I first discovered Dilbert via the Computer Weekly trade paper that was delivered to anyone with a PC in my office. I'd just moved from a small IT department in a family run business to a multi-national supermarket chain, and I was in complete shock at the way we were expected to work. But luckily there was a book shop nearby (remember those?) with plenty of Dilbert books. Slowly I picked up the Wisdom of Wally and managed to adapt and survive. My very last assignment (before I was politely asked if I'd like to hand in my resignation) was an MS Project schedule for a very large bid we were making...oh, by the way my department had been outsourced twice and I was working for someone else, yet still at the same desk at this point. Anyway I spent 2 months doing nothing but internet 'research', then spent the evening before the bid just randomly clicking about in MS Project, until I had 5 months of coloured blocks everywhere. I left the company a few weeks later. Recently I was contacted out of the blue by an IT recruitment agency asking if I was looking for work. Completely taken aback (I have run my own business for 6 years now and it's not even remotely IT related) I asked where they had got my name. Turned out the random schedule I had made was not only a bid winner but turned out to be the only IT project by a certain police force to ever come in earlier than expected, on budget and with virtually no additional support needed thanks to all the documentation and testing. My name was still on the original manuals as Project Organiser, hence why I was being contacted. So I thought I'd get this collection for old times sake, just a reminder of how absolutely stupid-fabulous my career in IT was.
(Only 4 stars because the author obviously did not have a pre-marketing consumer expectation report done, nor an executive committee for this book.)
Book Review: Dilbert 2.0, a must for every Dilbert fan!!
Summary: 4 Stars
Scott Adams has put together an almost ultimate collection of Dilbert for the twentieth anniversary of his workplace cartoon. The set contains a large hardcover book and a DVD. The book contains a history of Scott Adams' cartooning career from his earliest doodlings to early Dilbert cartoons to current panels. It includes feedback he received from publishers along with some personal notes he received early in his cartooning career. His history is interesting and touching. The stips are laid out logically from beginning to present. Along with the strips, the book contains commentaries detailing why Adams found the subject funny or what inspired him to draw/say what he did. (Adams did a similar take in the book "Seven Years Of Highly Defective People." It is a good companion to this, so don't toss it thinking you have the information in Dilbert 2.0.)
Why I say "an almost ultimate collection" is because the *book* does not contain all the published strips. There are entire weeks missing and several of the series are missing strips either making the story incomplete or cutting off part that makes that series funny. Though you'd have to read from beginning to end to notice this, it does detract from a collection that could--and should--have contained all the strips.
What will allow me to toss most of my old paperbacks is the included DVD containing all the strips to present day ("present day" being May 2008). They're sorted by date and in yearly folders. (A simple searchable database by business subject would have been helpful for quickly finding relevant items, but beggars can't be choosers.)
This is a good collection for all who like Dilbert and a great gift for any fan. It is well worth the (discounted) price I paid.
Book Review: Good Collection, but doesn't include all comics in Print
Summary: 4 Stars
Having been a fan of Dilbert since entering cubicle life some 10+ years ago, I was pretty excited when I saw that Scott Adams was giving us a collection of Dilbert all in one large volume, as opposed to the smaller volumes that had been published. I was thinking it would be awesome to have every Dilbert comic in print form.
Then I saw what this collection actually was; for those thinking this is a complete collection, it is but only with a caveat. Included with this book, which is a collection of Scott Adams' personal favorites and highly acclaimed strips, is a DVD that includes every strip ever produced at the point of the publication of the book. Every strip afterward they point you to the Dilbert website to view. So you get a complete collection of Dilbert strips, just not in print format.
The extra information Adams provides in the margins in regards to some of the strips is the equivalent of audio commentary on a DVD. It's nice to get some of the insider info on the thinking behind the strips. It's also fun to see some of the strips that had to be edited for newspapers in completely unedited format. So you see the censored comic and the uncensored original which is a treat.
I would have liked a little more information on the process of making the strips within the book itself, but what Adams includes, a brief history of the birth of Dilbert, is informative without being overwhelming.
A great collection, but perhaps not worth MSRP.
Book Review: Good but not truly great - yet
Summary: 4 Stars
With a legacy collection like this, the format is being reviewed as much as, or more, than the content. If you don't already know and like Dilbert, then it is unlikely that this an appropriate starting point.
There is an interesting introduction by Scott Adams, together with some early strips that never saw the ink of newsprint. Then a "best-of" collection follows, broken down by era, together with some notes on particular strips.
Unlike the Complete Calvin and Far Side, this is not a complete works. How could it be, when Adams is still writing Dilbert? But in a sense it is, as there is a CD with the complete Dilbert on it, and a note that for strips after publication, go to dilbert.com. So it's a wonderful huge hardbound collection, in one volume, whereas Far Side is two volumes and Calvin is three. Mind you, this is cheaper than those sets. Its still to big to take on the train though.
At the end of the day, this is everything it says it is...but still, it is not quite as enthralling as the Far Side and Calvin collections - which makes it only the third-best comic-strip compendium out there. Perhaps that judgment is because to a degree I read Far Side and Calvin in the last days of my boyhood, while Dilbert was and remains purely an adult pleasure, free of nostalgia.
This is well worth getting, but be aware what it is not.
Book Review: Very cool history of Scott and Dilbert
Summary: 4 Stars
I very much enjoyed the detailed history of Scott (all the way back to school age!) and his drawings and how his skills became refined while he worked in other jobs. I also liked the disk with all of the Dilberts you can think of, but I was under the impression that it would also have several videos (like from the short-lived TV show, or some of the shorts you sometimes see on Scott's Dilbert website) so I was a little disappointed. If those videos are there, I didn't find them, so someone please tell me where to look if you saw them on the disk.
The only other downside is that the book is rather large (presumably, in order to give the best quality experience) and so it is a little cumbersome. It also weighs something like 7 or 8 pounds--much more than most laptops! That's what makes the disk nice. Although it doesn't have all the other info that's in the book, it does have the whole history of published Dilberts. Very cool.