Dilbert comic strip creator and Windham native Scott Adams dies at 68

WINDHAM―Long before he created the world famous comic strip Dilbert, Scott Adams called the mountaintop of Greene County his home. Adams, who grew up in Windham, died Tuesday after a battle with cancer. He was 68.

Adams’ ex-wife, Shelly Miles, confirmed his death on a livestream posted to his social media accounts.

“Unfortunately, this is not good news,” Miles said, reading a final message written by Adams.

“I had an amazing life,” Adams stated in part. “I gave it everything I had.”

Adams announced last year that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. He was under Hospice care in his Northern California home.

A 1975 graduate of the Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School District, he was valedictorian of his class. Adams, who had been doodling and drawing comics since he was a kid, went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Hartwick College and an MBA from the University of California.

By the 1980s, he found himself in the corporate world of the Pacific Bell telephone company where idiosyncrasies and office politics inspired him to create Dilbert, a white-collar engineer whose sarcasm resonated with frustrated cubicle workers.

Adams eventually pitched his comic strip to publishers and in 1989 it was picked up by United Features Syndicate.

A mainstay of the funny pages for more than three decades, at its peak Dilbert appeared in 2,000 newspapers in more than 65 countries and two dozen languages.

In 1997, Adams won the National Cartoonist Society’s Reuben Award, one of the most respected recognitions for cartoonists. Later that year, Dilbert became the first fictional character to be named among Time magazine’s list of the top influential Americans.

But in 2023, Dilbert was dropped by numerous newspapers and its distributor, Andrews McMeel Universal, after Adams made comments that many deemed to be racist in one of his YouTube videos.

Adams described black Americans a "hate group" in response to a Rasmussen Reports’ poll in which people were asked to agree or disagree with the phrase: "It's OK to be white." According to the purported results, 53% of black respondents agreed with the statement, but 26% disagreed and others were not sure.

"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 had said in part.

His cancellation is still addressed today on his website, Dilbert.com, where Adams states, “No news about public figures is ever true and in context. Never.”

“I was speaking hyperbolically, of course, because we Americans don't have an option of staying away from each other,” he wrote. “But it did get a lot of attention, as I hoped. (More than I planned, actually.)”

Adams began self-publishing his daily comic strip under the new name Dilbert Reborn via subscription through the platform Rumble and continued to host his podcast, "Real Coffee With Scott Adams," discussing current social and political issues.

Over the years, he authored numerous books, including How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter and God’s Debris: A Thought Experiment.

"If you can come to peace with the fact that you're surrounded by idiots, you'll realize that resistance is futile, your tension will dissipate, and you can sit back and have a good laugh at the expense of others," he wrote in his 1996 book The Dilbert Principle.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump remembered Adams as a “Great Influencer.”

"He was a fantastic guy, who liked and respected me when it wasn’t fashionable to do so. 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,” the president said.

In Adam’s final message, written on New Year’s Day and read Tuesday by Miles, he stated, “If you are reading this, things did not go well for me.”

“Next, many of my Christian friends have asked me to find Jesus before I go. I'm not a believer, but I have to admit the risk-reward calculation for doing so looks so attractive to me, so here I go,” Adams continued.

“The part about me not being a believer should be quite quickly resolved if I wake up in heaven. I won't need any more convincing than that,” he wrote. “I hope I'm still qualified for entry.”

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