This week Scott Adams introduced the first Black character in his Dilbert comic strip.
Scott noted the new cast member on Twitter.
Which got this response from The Mary Sue:
Where to even start with this? The fact that Adams thinks waiting thirty-three years to introduce his first Black character could be viewed as anything but an embarrassment for him? Or maybe it’s that the way he chose to promote this strip from his personal account was by tweeting “Let’s see if the world is ready for this” and predicting he would get “cancelled” over it, giving a clear indication that his intention all along was to try to court controversy.
Others were upset that Scott used the introduction to take a shot at the trans population.
“Dilbert” creator [Scott Adams] introduces first black character in 33-year run, introduced solely to hate trans people
But many found humor in the comic strip. Not the gag but that Scott added no shading to Dave resulting in a confusing appearance in many newspapers.
That The Mary Sue item noted above and The Daily Kos were among those taking the veteran cartoonist to task for not realizing what the end product would look like in the print press.
The Daily Kos confused me by offering this assessment of Scott’s talent:
Adams has already proved himself to be the Ted Rall of Al Capps…
I’ll need someone to explain that description to me.
Dilbert © Scott Adams
Anyway Scott was informed before the week began that this week’s Dilbert comic strips were being cancelled by one newspaper chain.
Scott talks about the ban in the first few minutes of his April 29 podcast where he describes the newspaper group as “a substantial newspaper chain” and then as “a chain that owns mostly smaller newspapers.”
(Scott also admits in that podcast that were he offered an attractive price for the Dilbert intellectual property he would have no problem giving it up – though he would never give up his podcast.)
Current Dilbert does not run on GoComics but Andrew McMeel Universal “is responsible” for the Dilbert Facebook page where as of this writing the “Dave” strips have not been uploaded.
Remembering that Scott Adams is a fervent Trumpite makes this whole thing funny on another level entirely.
“Adams has already proved himself to be the Ted Rall of Al Capps.” There really was a guy named Al Capps. He was a music arranger, and just last night Andrew Sandoval featured Capps’ 1960’s musical arrangements on his “Come to the Sunshine” program: https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/115108
Inferring that Adams is using race solely to attack trans people requires a reminder of Rachel Dolezal being in the news seven years ago: https://dograt.com/2015/06/re-gif-ing/
The closest I can come to making sense of it is that Al Capp was a liberal who became conservative in his grumpy old man days, while Ted Rall is left of center who caps on progressives when he sees just cause to do so.
The Rochester NY /Democrat and Chronicle/ – a Gannett paper – ran yesterday’s strip (in incomprehensible black and white), but today substituted the strip from May 5, 2021.
Waiting for the announcement of Adams creating an NFT of the first appearance of Dave in black and white…
Other Gannett papers are continuing on the 4th to run different strips. The papers idea or the syndicate?
I have to admit that it didnt occur to me that the white guy self-identifying as white was not what Adams meant to do.
When Frankin joined Peanuts in 1968, newspapers didn’t complain.
Golly, I’m so triggered. Oh, you triggering beast. Oh, baby, you’re the most triggering of- .[Ding!] Seven dollars for the next three minutes.