For generations of Americans who grew up reading Highlights for Children magazine, one of the favorite features you’d flip to first was “Goofus and Gallant,” offering didactic morality lessons juxtaposing perfect kid “Gallant” with problematic kid “Goofus.” In one picture panel you’d get: “Gallant does his homework as soon as he gets home and finishes before dinner, then goes to bed right when he’s supposed to.” Then in the contrasting panel you’d get: “Goofus flops down and watches TV after school, doesn’t do his homework, eats candy bars and spoils his appetite for dinner, then stays up after bedtime reading comic books with a flashlight.” In other words, you were supposed to emulate Gallant, but you probably found it easier (if not a little subversive) to relate to Goofus.
Take Gallant out of the picture, and all you’re left with is a character whose sole raison d’etre is to provide stark examples of what not to do. Such was the case with Dilbert G. Groundloop—a cartoon Navy pilot who did all the wrong things, clueless, dangerous things more potentially lethal than the everyday transgressions of that minor-league slacker Goofus. Dilbert was the brainchild of Robert C. Osborn, who had drawn cartoons for how-to books in the 1930s before receiving a commission in the Naval Reserve during World War II. The U.S. Navy sought to use admonishing cartoon drawings—sometimes in posters, sometimes in thematic books—to educate its aviators about the myriad pitfalls to avoid, but to do so in an entertaining way, and Dilbert fit the bill.
The Royal Air Force had been employing much the same technique with its Cloudy Joe character—like Dilbert, a hapless, always-messing-up flyboy. (The U.S. Army deployed malingering, klutzy cartoon characters as negative exemplars as well: Sad Sack, Joe Dope, Private Snafu, et al.)
Dilbert’s name was said to be derived from the slang term “pulling a dillie,” that is, screwing up royally. (It was later used, on a coworker’s suggestion, by Scott Adams when he was developing his comic strip about a white-collar employee; Adams didn’t realize at the time it was an appropriated name.) Sometimes Dilbert the pilot was accompanied in his madcap mishaps by Spoiler the mechanic. Within naval aviation circles, Dilbert became a sort of cultural icon of World War II; “Dilbert for a Day” punishments required the offender to bear that shameful title, usually with a sign around his neck to add to the ignominy; “Demon Dilbert” nose art was painted on an airplane fuselage; and “Don’t be a Dilbert” became a catchphrase that all instantly understood.
The character even “went Hollywood,” to an extent, in a cautionary 1943 training film that starred lovable goofball Huntz Hall (“Sach” in the Bowery Boys movies) as Dilbert. The title was bluntly to the point: Don’t Kill Your Friends. After the war, the Navy continued to use the Dilbert character through the 1950s into the 1960s.
These Dilbert cartoons, published by the U.S. Navy Training Division and now housed in the U.S. Naval Institute Archives, offer a crash course (pun intended) in all the things a flier simply should not do—that is, all the things that Dilbert always did. But, like Wile E. Coyote perpetually falling off that cliff in vain pursuit of the Road Runner, Dilbert G. Groundloop always just seemed to take a licking and keep on ticking.
