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Scott Adams has died at the age of 68

Adams created the comic Dilbert, which became popular in the '90s

Dilbert was dropped from dozens of newspapers after Adams' racist comments in a 2023 rant

Scott Adams has died at the age of 68. Adams first published Dilbert, a comic strip that satirized life in white-collar offices, in 1989. The comic strip became ubiquitous in the 1990s. Dilbert was pulled from wide circulation, however, after Adams degraded Black people in a 2023 rant.

Adams' ex-wife, Shelly Miles, announced his death during a Jan. 13 episode of his Coffee with Scott Adams podcast. Miles read a “final message” that Adams wrote and wanted to share.

 Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty

“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.”

Scott Adams with plush Dilbert toys in 1998.

Kat Wade/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty 

“Once the marriage unwound, I needed a new focus, a new meaning, and so I donated myself to the world, literally speaking the words out loud in my other wife’s 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.”

Adams discussed writing several of his later nonfiction books, 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, as well as starting 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.”

Scott Adams with 'Dilbert'.

Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty

Adams announced in May 2025 that he had prostate cancer, noting it had spread to his bones. “Every day is a nightmare, and evening is even worse,” he said.

In January 2026, he said his chances of recovering from the cancer were “essentially zero.” He shared he had lost feeling in his legs and was in heart failure.

Adams was born in Windham, N.Y., in 1957. He told PEOPLE in 1996 that his mother told him he could do anything. "She said I could be president. I wanted to be [Peanuts creator] Charles Schulz,” he said. He was widely discouraged from a career in cartoons, and after a series of rejections, majored in economics. He took a job as a bank teller and after completing an MBA at Berkley was hired at Pacific Bell. 

Dilbert grew out of doodles he made at work, a composite of his coworkers. "They all had little potato-shaped bodies, and they had glasses," he said. He held a contest to name the title character. United Media, a syndicator of comics, picked up the strip in 1989, but the series really popped off when Adams put his email address at the end of the strip.

Scott Adams in the Chicago Tribune offices in 2002.

Phil Velasquez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty

"Most of the ideas I use are from e-mail,” he told PEOPLE in 1995. “It's like tapping into this great collective consciousness. The office and technology themes were the most popular. I shifted the emphasis [from home life], and the strip's popularity zoomed." 

Adams was the first nationally syndicated cartoonist to put his strips online, and office workers across the country frequently posted the cartoon in their cubicles in what PEOPLE called a symbol of “passive resistance.” By the mid '90s, the strip appeared in more than 1,000 newspapers in 32 countries and had spawned multiple best-selling books and a line of Hallmark cards. PEOPLE named Dilbert one of the most interesting people of 1996.

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Adams said the key to the success was his “cubicle-eye perspective.” He quit his corporate job in 1995 to focus on Dilbert full time. Despite Dilbert’s targets, Adams said he didn’t mind big-business — just idiots: "Unfortunately, the world is full of them, and a disproportionate number are promoted to management." 

A Dilbert TV series aired on UPN for two seasons and won a Primetime Emmy Award for its title sequence. There was even branded Dilbert food — the Dilberito, a vegetarian microwave burrito launched in 1999.

Scott Adams in his home office in 2024. Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty

By the 2000s, Adams had begun writing non-Dilbert books, like 2001’s God's Debris and 2004’s The Religion War. Dozens of Dilbert books were published over 30 years, including anniversary compendiums and humorous self-help guides, like 1998’s The Joy of Work. 

Adams was married to Miles from 2006 until 2014, when they divorced. He became stepfather to her two children. In a 2010 interview with PEOPLE, Adams credited Miles with helping him recover from spasmodic dysphonia, a disease that causes the vocal cords to spasm and garble speech. Until a 2008 surgery helped many of the symptoms, Adams was nearly mute because of it. “I felt like a ghost,” he said. 

Adams married Kristina Basham in 2020. In 2022, he announced they were getting divorced.

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Adams often weighed in on politics in his later years and endorsed President Donald Trump in the 2016 election. He was also opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine and masking, per PolitiFact. NPR reported in 2023 that he once questioned the death toll of the Holocaust.

During a 2023 episode of his YouTube show, Adams discussed a Rasmussen poll that found 53% of Black Americans agreed with the statement "It's okay to be White.” A further 26% disagreed and 21% specified they weren't sure.

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, "I'm also really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black citizens” and criticized Black people for not "focusing on education."

Dilbert was dropped by numerous newspapers and its distributor after his comments. He continued to publish Dilbert online.