Scott Adams, Disgraced Dilbert Creator, Dies at 68

Scott Adams, the cartoonist and author behind Dilbert, has died at 68. He launched the office-satire comic strip in 1989, and it became a staple of workplace culture in the 1990s. In later years, the strip was removed from wide newspaper circulation after a 2023 rant in which Adams made degrading comments about Black people.

Adams’ ex-wife, Shelly Miles, announced his death during a Jan. 13 episode of his Coffee with Scott Adams podcast. During the episode, Miles read what she described as a “final message” Adams wrote and wanted shared publicly.

“If you are reading this, things did not go well for me,” Miles read. “I have a few things to say before I go. My body failed before my brain. I am of sound mind as I write this January 1, 2026.”

She continued: “With your permission, I’d like to explain my life. For the first part of my life, I was focused on making myself a worthy husband and parent, as I waited to find meaning. That worked, but marriages don’t always last forever, and mine eventually ended in a highly amicable way. I’m grateful for those years and for the people I came to call my family.”

In the message, Adams reflected on searching for purpose after his divorce, saying he “needed a new focus” and chose to devote himself to helping others. Miles read that he began looking for ways to “add the most to people’s life,” describing it as a shift from being known primarily as the Dilbert cartoonist to writing nonfiction books he hoped would be useful.

Adams also referenced several of his later nonfiction titles, including 2013’s How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, 2017’s Win Bigly, 2019’s Loserthink, and 2023’s Reframe Your Brain, along with the launch of Coffee with Scott Adams.

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

In May 2025, Adams disclosed that he had prostate cancer and said it had spread to his bones. “Every day is a nightmare, and evening is even worse,” he said at the time. In January 2026, he said his chances of recovery were “essentially zero,” adding that he had lost feeling in his legs and was experiencing heart failure.

Adams was born in Windham, N.Y., in 1957. He pursued economics after being discouraged from a career in cartoons, and later completed an MBA at Berkley before working at Pacific Bell. Dilbert grew from doodles he made while working—characters he described as having “little potato-shaped bodies” and glasses. After he ran a contest to name the main character, United Media picked up the strip in 1989. Adams later credited a surge in popularity to publishing his email address at the end of the strip, which led to a steady stream of ideas from readers.

He was an early adopter of putting his work online, and Dilbert became a familiar sight in office cubicles. By the mid-1990s, the strip appeared in more than 1,000 newspapers in 32 countries and expanded into best-selling books and other licensed products. Adams left his corporate job in 1995 to work on Dilbert full time, often explaining the comic’s edge as coming from a “cubicle-eye perspective.” While the strip skewered corporate life, he framed his real target more narrowly: “just idiots,” arguing that too many were promoted into management.

A Dilbert animated TV series aired on UPN for two seasons and won a Primetime Emmy Award for its title sequence. The brand also ventured into novelty merchandise, including the Dilberito, a vegetarian microwave burrito introduced in 1999.

By the 2000s, Adams expanded beyond Dilbert with books such as 2001’s God’s Debris and 2004’s The Religion War. Over three decades, dozens of Dilbert collections and related titles were published, including anniversary compilations and humor-leaning self-help books like 1998’s The Joy of Work.

Adams and Miles were married from 2006 until their divorce in 2014. He became stepfather to her two children. In a 2010 interview, Adams credited Miles with helping him during a period when he struggled with spasmodic dysphonia, a condition that affects speech; he said a 2008 surgery helped relieve many symptoms.

Adams later married Kristina Basham in 2020, and in 2022 he said the two were divorcing.

In his later years, Adams frequently weighed in on politics and endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 election. PolitiFact reported that he opposed COVID-19 vaccination and masking, and NPR reported in 2023 that he had questioned the Holocaust death toll.

In 2023, Adams discussed a Rasmussen poll that found 53% of Black Americans agreed with the statement “It’s okay to be White,” while 26% disagreed and 21% said they weren’t sure. During the episode, Adams said, in part, “If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with White people… that’s a hate group. I don’t want to have anything to do with them. 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… because there is no fixing this.”

He added,