What Would Wally Do?

A Dilbert Treasury

review by

Tony Nappa

WHAT WOULD WALLY DO?: A DILBERT TREASURY

by Scott Adams

(Andrews McMeel Publishers)

Reader Appeal: All Ages

Genre: Humor / Cartoons

What Would Wally Do? is a wondrous book filled to the brim with stories of Wally, Dilbert’s lazy worker, who somehow is still employed!

This book is purely a collection of Dilbert strips that focus on Wally and all of his hilarious shenanigans. This compilation starts near the beginning the Dilbert comic strips and works its way through the years until the strips are ones that are very recent.

Throughout this book you are constantly reminded of the outrageously funny things that Wally does to keep his job even when it is obvious that he should be fired. (Although there is actually one time that he does lose his job, but he still stays in the office throughout the time of his unemployment. In the end, he is hired back.) This book goes through the ups and downs of Wally’s pathetic little cubical life, and how he makes the best of it. - and the result is hours of entertaining casual reading

I especially liked this book because it’s all about Wally, and he has been my favorite Dilbert character almost since I started reading the comic every day in my local newspaper. For instance, there is a little series where Wally is in charge of giving cubical assignments to his coworkers when they move into a new building. All of the Wally's power-hungry demands that he makes the others do for him are pretty doggone funny. Wally also throws out some stingers in another series where Dilbert volunteers to have an all day staff meeting at his house. And there are the times when Wally does terribly on a task and he talks the pointy-haired boss into believing that he did something grand, therefore getting himself praise, or better yet, a raise! Overall, there is almost never a dull moment throughout this set of great Wally cartoons.

However, there were a few drawbacks that kind of disappointed me in this book. One of these is that there is almost never a complete series which is shown. Sometimes I wanted to know what was going to happen next, but since the next strip or strips in the original series didn’t involve Wally, I was left wondering how things would end. There are also some strips that could have been left out of this book because they don’t really involve Wally as a key character. Sometimes he only has one little thing to say, and while most of the time it is funny, there are some moments when it just isn’t really merit inclusion in a "best of Wally' style book like this one. I think also that this could have been better as a shorter book only showing the greatest and best of Wally’s moments,

And yet, overall this was still a book I couldn't put down because, let's face it, Wally knows how to bring on the funny!

I would recommend this book to people of all ages who are fans of the Dilbert series, and especially to those who particularly enjoy Wally strips.

FAMILYFANS RATING:  B+

If members of your family like this book, then you may also want to try…

• Any of the other Dilbert books in print. These poke fun at office work and shows the ups and downs in a comedic light.

 --TN