Scott Adams dies: ‘Dilbert’ cartoonist and creator was 68

Scott Adams, whose caricature “Dilbert” satirized a sure form of office tradition for greater than 30 years earlier than it was pushed from broad distribution over its creator’s feedback on race, died Tuesday morning after a battle with metastatic prostate most cancers. He was 68.

The announcement got here by way of Adams’ video channels, the place he livestreamed every day till Monday morning.

“Hi everyone. Unfortunately this isn’t good news. Of course he waited until just before the show started, but he’s not with us anymore,” his ex-wife, Shelly Miles, mentioned by way of tears Tuesday morning.

The cartoonist, whose extraordinarily dry humor and heterodox political opinions had been on public show in recent times on his every day livestream “Real Coffee With Scott Adams,” spoke on to his viewers till the day earlier than he died, getting some assist from associates in his remaining days.

Adams additionally left an announcement as a kind of coda, written New Year’s Day and browse aloud Tuesday by his ex-wife, that famous his physique had failed him however his thoughts had not.

“I had an amazing life. I gave it everything I had,” Adams wrote. “If you got any benefits from my work, I’m asking that you pay it forward as best you can. That’s the legacy I want. Be useful, and please know I loved you all till the very end.”

Adams revealed his Stage 4 most cancers prognosis in May 2025, shortly after former President Biden’s metastatic prostate most cancers prognosis went public.

“Some of you have already guessed, so this won’t surprise you at all, but I have the same cancer Joe Biden has,” he mentioned on his May 19, 2025, livestream. “I also have prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones, but I’ve had it longer than he’s had it. Well, longer than he’s admitted having it.”

He famous that he and the previous commander in chief each had “the bad kind” of prostate most cancers.

“There’s something you need to know about prostate cancer,” he mentioned. “If it’s localized and it hasn’t left your prostate, it’s 100% curable. But if it leaves your prostate and spreads to other parts of your body … it is 100% not curable.”

As of May, Adams had been utilizing a walker and coping with horrible ache as a result of, he mentioned, the most cancers had unfold to his bones. Saying that the illness was “already intolerable,” he added, “I can tell you that I don’t have good days.” He mentioned throughout a December present that he was “paralyzed” from the waist down within the sense that though he had sensation, he couldn’t transfer any of these muscle tissue.

Given all that, he mentioned, “my life expectancy is maybe this summer. I expect to be checking out from this domain sometime this summer.” But Adams outlived that prediction, livestreaming from his hospital mattress throughout a keep for radiation therapy earlier than Christmas and choosing up once more from his mattress at dwelling after that.

Born Scott Raymond Adams on June 8, 1957, in Windham, N.Y., to a postal clerk father and an actual property agent mom, he began drawing cartoons when he was 6. Adams was valedictorian at Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School, obtained his bachelor’s in economics from Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., after which moved to California, the place he earned a grasp’s in enterprise administration at UC Berkeley.

He proceeded to work for years at Crocker National Bank and Pacific Bell, holding the sorts of generic company workplace jobs his caricature would use as fodder. While he was at PacBell, he woke up every day earlier than daybreak to strive to determine an alternate profession. Cartooning gained out.

“Dilbert,” which launched in 1989, went from working in a handful of papers to, at its peak, showing in additional than 2,000 shops in 57 nations and 19 languages. Adams obtained the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award, the trade’s highest honor, in 1997. Page-a-day “Dilbert” calendars had been high sellers for years, with greater than 20 million calendars and “Dilbert” books in print.

The comedian took satirical intention at a micromanaged white-collar office and finally grew into an empire that included a brief TV collection (principally written by Adams), dozens of books — examples embrace “Casual Day Has Gone Too Far” in 1997 and “The Fluorescent Light Glistens Off Your Head” in 2005 — and ubiquitous merchandise.

Dilbert, the strip’s surrogate for Adams, interacted with characters together with the Pointy-Haired Boss; the boss’ secretary, Carol; co-worker Wally, who was making an attempt to get fired so he would get severance; the competent however underappreciated Alice; hardworking however naive intern Asok; the clueless CEO; the evil HR chief Catbert; and Dogbert, the neatest canine on the planet.

In addition to his quite a few comedian compilations, Adams’ books included enterprise writing like “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” and “Win Bigly.”

Adams married girlfriend Shelly Miles, a mom of two, in 2006, and the wedding lasted eight years. The two remained associates after their 2014 divorce, with Miles finally studying Adams’ remaining message to viewers.

In his remaining assertion, Adams broke his life into two components: In the primary he “focused on making myself a worthy husband and parent as a way to find meaning,” he wrote. “That worked.” When his marriage ended amicably, he moved on to the second half, the place he needed to discover a new focus.

So, he wrote, “I donated myself to the world, literally speaking the words out loud in my otherwise silent home. From that point on, I looked for ways I could add the most to people’s life, one way or another. That marked the start of my evolution from ‘Dilbert’ cartoonist to an author of what I hoped would be useful books. By then I believed I had enough life lessons that I could start passing them on. … As luck would have it, I’m a good writer.”

He talked about how these two enterprise books had been obtained. “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” was, he wrote, “a huge success, often imitated.”

“I know the book [“Win Bigly”] modified lives as a result of I hear it typically,” he wrote. “You’d probably never know the impact the book had on the world, but I know, and it pleases me while giving me a sense of meaning that is impossible to describe.”

Adams began “Real Coffee With Scott Adams” in 2018, aiming to assist folks take into consideration the world and their lives in a extra productive manner. The podcast started with the “Simultaneous Sip,” when he would invite viewers — who additionally participated in reside working feedback — to expertise a good-morning sip of the beverage of their selection together with him as he tucked into his morning espresso.

“I didn’t plan it this way, but it ended up helping lots of lonely people find a community that made them less lonely,” he wrote concerning the podcast. “Again, that had great meaning to me.”

Adams’ weekday morning livestreams usually garnered tens of hundreds of views on YouTube and had been additionally viewable on Rumble, the place the cartoonist went to keep away from speech restrictions on YouTube on the top of the COVID-19 pandemic. He approached his every day evaluations of the information with dry humor and a robust sense of absurdity, leaving himself open to misinterpretation when some statements had been taken at face worth.

The description on one among his video accounts learn, “If you enjoy learning how to be more effective in life while catching up with the interesting news, this is the channel for you.”

The similar yr he began his present, Adams discovered that his stepson Justin, whom he mentioned he had “raised from the age of 2,” was useless of an overdose at 18 after years of battling habit. Adams fought again tears as he defined in his livestream that Justin’s decision-making talents had suffered after a head harm sustained in a motorbike accident when he was 14.

The cartoonist’s political opinions have been all around the map — he as soon as referred to as himself “a libertarian, minus the crazy stuff.” He famous a number of instances publicly that socially he was a liberal who was “left of Bernie” Sanders. In 2016, he declared, “I don’t vote and I am not a member of a political party. I try to avoid identifying with any political label because doing so would make me biased and less credible.” More just lately he veered towards assist for President Trump, whom he thought-about an awesome persuader of individuals, even if he “scared” folks Adams knew and preferred.

Adams claimed to have misplaced his TV job for “being white” when the community, UPN, determined to focus on a Black viewers. He additionally mentioned his race value him two company jobs.

Then, in February 2023, remarks Adams made on his podcast had been interpreted as racist, resulting in severe penalties in his profession.

During a midweek livestream, Adams had riffed off the outcomes of a ballot that requested whether or not folks agreed with the assertion “It’s OK to be white.” Among Black respondents, 26% disagreed and 21% mentioned they weren’t positive — a complete of 47% who didn’t assume it was OK to be white.

(The seemingly innocuous phrase “It’s OK to be white” had been co-opted in 2017 for a web-based trolling marketing campaign aimed toward baiting liberals and the media, the Anti-Defamation League mentioned in an announcement on the time. The phrase additionally has a historical past of use amongst white supremacists.)

“If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people … that’s a hate group. And I don’t want anything to do with them,” Adams mentioned in his typical deadpan supply. “And based on how things are going, the best advice I could give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people. Just get the f— away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. ’Cause there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.”

He continued, nonetheless deadpan, “So I think it makes no sense whatsoever, as a white citizen of America, to try to help Black citizens anymore. It doesn’t make sense. There’s no longer a rational impulse. And so I’m going to back off from being helpful to Black America, because it doesn’t seem like it pays off. Like, I’ve been doing it all my life and the only outcome is I get called a racist.”

Within days, amid backlash about Adams’ feedback, “Dilbert” was dropped by plenty of newspapers, together with the Los Angeles Times. Then his syndicator, which had offered “Dilbert” to shops that printed the comedian, shed him as a shopper solely. And Penguin Random House slammed the door shut when it nixed publication of his book “Reframe Your Brain,” which might have come out that fall, and eliminated his again catalog from its choices.

Adams mentioned his personal “cancellation” after the actual fact, saying just a few days afterward his livestream that he had been utilizing hyperbole, “meaning an exaggeration,” to make some extent. He mentioned the tales that reported his feedback had used a trick: “The trick is just to use my quote and to ignore the context which I helpfully added afterwards.”

But he mentioned that no person would disagree along with his two details, which had been to “treat all individuals as individuals, no discrimination” and “avoid anything that statistically looks like a bad idea for you personally.” He additionally disavowed racists.

Adams wound up self-publishing “Reframe Your Brain” in August 2023. The dedication learn, “For the Simultaneous Sippers (Thank you for saving me.).”