STRIP FOR Jul 25, 2008

@red33410,

Without necessarily stating that the analysis of these particular comic characters is correct, are you implying that you did not judge the multitudes of people taking Dogbert's classes as idiotic based on their appearance? If that's the case then I'm surprised you read this comic at all, when so often visual appearance is used as an a clue to the inner nature of a person. The Pointy Hair is a defining characteristic of their incompetent, moronic boss, and has been used to indicate similar traits in other characters as well (not to mention relentlessly mocked by characters in the strip itself; see Alice's many "Fuh! Fuh! Fuh!" routines).

And like it or not, physical appearance can provide many clues about a persons character. I'm not talking whether they choose a goth style of dress or are wearing a cowboy hat, nor am I talking hairstyle or skin color. A person's attitude, demeanor, and the finer points of his/her visual appearance can all give important clues about that person (for instance if you see a person walking through a store without air conditioning in the middle of July who is wearing heavy black clothes with a heavy black trenchcoat, it's probable something is going on). In a comic, we don't get to see all of those details, nor do we get to talk to the people long term, so their internal character traits are exaggerated, and often tied to physical or visual clues, so that the reader can easily understand what each character is supposed to be.

I would have thought that the long history of characters that behaved exactly like their names would have given this away, honestly....

So many words to describe a syntax error. I prefer the CLI error messages instead. They just say something like "? Syntax Error". Even the DOS error message: "Bad Command or File name" is better than these lecturous rants.

What's wrong with it?

Weren't we told more than 40 years ago, by MLK, that he wanted to see a society where people are judged by "the content of their character - not the color of their skin..." or the shape of their head or hair?

@red33410: What is wrong with judging characters based on their appearance in a comic? It is the only clue (aside from any speech) that we are given as to their intelligence.

In fact Scott regularly uses his drawings to indicate stupidity, for instance pointy hair, tongues poking out etc.