The final “Dilbert,” in its Sunday-funnies incarnation, anyway.
Wile E. Coyote never saw the edge until he went over it.
Then it was “Ffffeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww … pow!”
Working the ragged edge for fun and profit is a hazardous occupation. Become enraptured by your own artistry and suddenly you notice a certain lack of mission-critical support. That telltale rush of air. From joker to joke in one easy misstep.
Uh oh. …
Until cartoonist Scott Adams took his header I hadn’t read “Dilbert” in years, but I remembered the strip being funny, even though I hadn’t had any real personal contact with office culture since I quit The New Mexican in 1991.
Apparently the strip had become less amusing over the years — to some readers and editors, anyway — and then when Adams shat the bed with a David Duke impersonation over at YouTube, before you could say “Meep meep” it was “Ffffeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww … pow!”
I got a little too far out over my skis a time or two, mostly before Twitter mobs became a thing.
The University of Northern Colorado’s Mirror gave me the heave-ho after my cartoons inchwormed up some overly tight arseholes. Years later the weekly Sentinel chain in Denver showed me the door; it was part of the usual layoffs, but I got mine for being a dick. The publisher was a twat. These two things can coexist, even find happiness, but ours wasn’t a match made in heaven.
As a freelancer for VeloNews and Bicycle Retailer and Industry News I annoyed a few readers and advertisers with cartoons and columns, but my crimes were rarely felonies and management almost always had my back.
When I finally left it was under my own steam and nobody changed the locks afterward. There were no mourners, but neither was there a lynch mob. I’ll call that a win.
Dilbert and The Old Guy Who Gets Fat in Winter appeared the same year, in 1989. Thank Cthulhu old Fatso never made it as big (har de har har) as Dilbert did. ’Tis unknown what class of a dick I might have made of meself on the YouTubes.
• Editor’s note: Props to The Firesign Theatre’s Nino the Mind-Boggler for the headline.
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