Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip “Dilbert,” has died after being diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. He was 68.
The cartoonist’s former wife Shelly Miles announced his death in a livestream on X on Tuesday morning, reading a statement Adams had prepared.
“If you are reading this, things did not go well for me,” the statement began.
Miles fought through tears as she read the message, which was dated Jan. 1. She said Adams had been in hospice care at his home in Northern California.
“I had an amazing life,” it concluded. “I gave it everything I had. If you got any benefits from my work, I’m asking you to pay it forward as best you can. That is the legacy I want. Be useful. And please know I loved you all to the end.”
In November, Adams issued a plea for President Trump to “help save his life” after the cartoonist said his health care provider, Kaiser Permanente, “dropped the ball” in scheduling treatment of a newly FDA-approved drug for the disease.
“He offered to help me if I needed it,” Adams wrote on X. “I need it.”
“I am declining fast,” the cartoonist continued. “I will ask President Trump if he can get Kaiser of Northern California to respond and schedule it. … That will give me a fighting chance to stick around on this planet a little bit longer.”
“On it!” Trump replied in a post on Truth Social .
On Tuesday, Trump called Adams a “Great Influencer.”
“He was a fantastic guy, who liked and respected me when it wasn’t fashionable to do so,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that included a photo of them in the Oval Office. “He bravely fought a long battle against a terrible disease. My condolences go out to his family, and all of his many friends and listeners. He will be truly missed. God bless you Scott!”
Adams in his studio in 2006. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
In May, Adams announced that he had an aggressive form of metastatic prostate cancer after former President Joe Biden’s office announced he had been diagnosed with the same disease.
“I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has,” Adams said on “Real Coffee With Scott Adams,” his YouTube show. “I also have prostate cancer that has spread to my bones.”
Adams said he tried to avoid going public with his diagnosis out of fear he’d become “just the dying cancer guy.” But he decided to speak after Biden revealed his own diagnosis.
“I’d like to extend my respect and compassion for the ex-president and his family because they’re going through an especially tough time,” he said. “It’s a terrible disease.”
The rise of ‘Dilbert’
Born in Windham, N.Y., on June 8, 1957, Scott Raymond Adams grew up in the Catskills. His father was a postal worker, and his mother was a real estate broker. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Hartwick College, in Oneonta, N.Y., in 1979, and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986.
Adams began doodling what would become “Dilbert” on notepads as a bank teller in San Francisco and later on whiteboards in his cubicle at the Pacific Bell telephone company. He eventually submitted the cartoon for syndication.
“Dilbert” was first published in 1989, and the comic strip ran for decades in thousands of newspapers across the country. Its satirical office humor about white-collar, micromanaged offices filled with corporate buzzwords earned Adams critical acclaim. and the “Dilbert” franchise eventually grew into multiple books as well as a TV show.
Adams during a 2006 interview at his studio California. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
“Adams proved adept at growing his audience during the tech boom of the 1990s, creating a ‘Dilbert’ website long before most other cartoonists took to the internet,” the Washington Post said in its obituary. “He also became the first major syndicated cartoonist to include his email address in his comic strip, an innovation that allowed readers to contact him directly with ideas. Their feedback convinced him to focus the cartoon entirely on the workplace, after some of the strip’s early installments explored Dilbert’s home life.”
Adams was also an early adopter of blogs, where he would expound on a wide range of subjects, including politics.
In 2016, he correctly predicted Trump would win the election. The following year, he published the bestselling nonfiction book “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter,” in which he lauded Trump as the “most persuasive American of all time.” The cover of the book featured a drawing depicting Dogbert, Dilbert’s pet dog, as Trump.
Adams was later invited to the White House to meet with the president.
The controversy that doomed it
In 2023, “Dilbert” was dropped by most publications following a racist rant made by Adams on his YouTube series.
While discussing a controversial poll in which more than a quarter (26%) of Black correspondents disagreed with the statement, “It’s OK to be white,” Adams said that African Americans were “a hate group.”
“I don’t want to have anything to do with them,” Adams said. “And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people.”
Adams later refused to apologize, saying he made the remarks “intentionally.”
He relaunched “Dilbert” as a subscription-only online strip called “Dilbert Reborn.”
