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Comic Strips Obituary

Scott Adams – RIP

Published: January 13, 2026 1 minute 22 comments

Dilbert cartoonist and libertarian influencer Scott Adams has passed away.

Scott Adams

Scott Raymond Adams

June 8, 1957 – January 13, 2026

It is being reported that Scott Adams has lost his fight against cancer.

Scott Adams began his adult working career as an office worker for Crocker Bank (1979-1986) and Pacific Bell (1986-1995). It was at the latter that the idea for Dilbert was formed.

the first Dilbert by Scott Adams – April 16, 1989

Dilbert began syndication with United Feature Syndicate on April 16, 1989 and while steadily gaining newspapers Adams still needed his day job for living expenses. On December 31, 1993 Adams added his internet address in the gutter of the comic strip. Adams has credited the resulting influx of comments and suggestions from readers helping the strip to be a more realistic and funny slice of cubicle life. The number of papers signing on to the strip began growing and when Bill Watterson ended Calvin and Hobbes at the end of 1995 Dilbert was the main beneficiary. In the year 2000 Dilbert joined Peanuts, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Blondie as the handful of comic strips that surpassed the 2,000 newspaper circulation mark.

In 2015 Adams began airing his political views, to the delight of some and the dismay of others. In time the growing audience of his podcasts took precedence over his comic strip readers. And soon his political views began infiltrating the comic strip. In 2022 Adams would claim that his politics was the reason Lee Enterprises dropped Dilbert. In February 2023 newspapers across the country, and soon after his syndicate, would drop Dilbert after Adams described Black Americans as “a hate group” and said “the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people; just get the f*ck away.”

The last syndicated Dilbert, by then distributed by Andrews McMeel, ran in a few papers on March 26, 2023.

the last Dilbert by Scott Adams – March 26, 2023

During those years Dilbert was published in an amazing number of best selling comic strip collections and Scott Adams authored many best selling advice books.

Before the last syndicated Dilbert appeared Adams had already begun the Dilbert Reborn webcomic on March 13, 2023. It was not Adams’ first webcomic, in 2015 he created the political Robots Read News.

Obituaries can be read at Variety, The New York Times (or here), The Washington Post (or here), The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle (Adams local major paper), The New York Post, and from conservative sites Townhall and Daily Caller, and from the liberal Raw Story.

feature image from the back cover of The Dilbert Principle.

all images are © The Estate of Scott Adams

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Comments 22

  1. Scott’s unparalleled talent and huge influence are enduring. Prayers for him and his family. Rest in peace and “Sip on”…

  2. Condolences to Scott’s family and fans.

    1. To his family maybe, to hell with his fans.

      1. To Scott, his “fans” were family.

      2. “the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people; just get the f*ck away.” – you may want to reflect on the fact that if you had more melanin, you probably wouldn’t be considered “family.”

  3. I can’t say what I really think for fear of getting in trouble, but I will say that as someone who was practically raised on Dilbert, I was sorely disappointed and deeply disgusted when Adams went full MAGA/white supremacist.

    I’ve seen other comments on how Adams really began to slide downhill in the 2010s, and how his views changed from defending the workers to defending the Pointy-Haired Boss, and now we have a real life PHB running the country. It’s going about as well as you’d expect…

    1. Scott welcomed everyone into the fold, regardless of outrage hoaxes lobbed at him for speaking hard truths. He’s earned eternal respect, not only for his talent, but for his beliefs.

      1. Or he ingeniously used his hypnotic superpowers to make you think so.

  5. it was unfortunately expected his disease and knowing so well the inevitable fate I bought the Dilbert calendar 2026 in honor of Scott Adams

    we should forgive him, that’s the right thing!

  6. I’ve seen a thread elsewhere, where people also detailed the many ways he was toxic and racist. (Like AJ has observed!) There was some anti-evolution thinking in there, some Holocaust questioning, and of course he went pro-Trump MAGA. It is also apparently well known that he created sockpuppet accounts pretending to be someone else, while praising himself.

    Interesting case of someone who was undeniably competent in some fields, ‘has it all’, but becomes less and less restrained, talks too much, becomes bitter at those who didn’t get the privilege he did, punches down, and becomes more sure that he’s brilliant at everything. Apparently on his show, just a few days before he died, he was still “joking with his guests about how dumb liberal women must be to go protest right in front of heavily armed, amped up police”. While one can legitimately question the risks of protesting in the new police state, Adams was just a nasty human being.

    I still like the many earlier years of his cartoons.

    1. Re: “… someone who was undeniably competent in some fields, … but becomes less and less restrained …” — There are are numerous examples of people who have produced brilliant pieces of literature, art, or scientific research, but whose personal conduct and/or social outlook were “less than perfect”. The fundamental issue is whether an author’s composition (in whatever form) can (or should) be dissociated from the “transgressions” in question. There is no universal solution, each case needs to be evaluated on its own merits, and it is unlikely that a consensus will ever be found.

    2. “I’ve seen”…”Someone said”…Where’s the evidence??? Taking Scott’s observations out of context to smear him is weak and pathetic. He welcomed everyone regardless their “melanin” and engaged others who were sincerely interested in exploring genuine new ideas. It’s an absurd notion to think the pc media is extolling Truths or has the ability to tarnish Scott’s legacy.

      1. It’s cute how much you want that to be true.

      2. Your argument would carry more weight if the past week of “The Scott Adams School” had not featured dozens of guests who were exclusively white folk.

  7. I have thought for a long time that people who are famous because of a talent or product should just stick to what they do well and not opine about everything. Their fame gives them a soapbox if they wish to use it, but perching up there often ends with them having it kicked out from under them. Just because you wrote a book or starred in a movie or started a famous restaurant does not make your opinion on religion, politics or social issues more insightful than the man in the street’s. It just means you get heard by a bunch of people who are in a position to do without your main source of income because of your inability to know when to keep your trap shut, like the birdie in the cow pie.

  8. Personal recollection: There used to be a regular gathering of cartoonists and writers here in California during the early ’90s & one month he was the special guest. Although already syndicated, he was pretty much unknown to the community at the time.

    Upon arrival I saw him sitting alone at table. Everyone was pretty much ignoring him so I walked over, said hi & introduced myself. He seemed somewhat shy so spotting the photocopies of Dilbert he had brought along, asked to see them. Upon viewing I mumbled the typical nice things one does under these circumstances but thought the drawing to be highly amateurish. I didn’t bother to read them, assuming the humor was on par and that was a mistake. It was the true strength of his strip. Beyond the repulsive beliefs he publicly expressed later in life, one has to admit he was a brilliant humorist….

    1. ,,, To Admin’s point, I’m curious as to the percentage of non “white folks” are featured here on a regular bases. I’d speculate Scott had a much more diverse and wider audience. Scott had an appreciation of every human being, respecting their merit and morals, not obsessing on “melanin” like so many of his detractors.

      1. If you looked at and thought about the comics shown here, rather than living in the comments section, shilling for MAGA to (you may have not noticed) a deeply unreceptive audience, you would see that the “percentage of non-white folks” represented here is substantial.
        As for SA’s racism, it was disguised as MAGA “common sense” politics, just SO that he could get away with it, as it is throughout the Trump administration. I don’t know if you are really as ghoulish and inhuman as they are, but proudly proclaiming yourself as a “jailer” does seem like a positive indication. How sad, (and provoking) it must be for jailers to see the administration trying to end their jobs in the US by outsourcing them to Uganda, Sudan, El Salvador, etc., as has happened to manufacturing jobs over the past 40 years.

  9. I do believe Adams was sick before his cancer. Not that I’m qualified, but I’m thinking ADHD and/or bipolar disorder since he contradicted himself very often. While he praised Trump, he also said he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 for his safety to avoid a race war. Most of what I suppose he meant as apologies were framed as clarifications. He posted on Twitter after his “black people hate group” comment that he meant he was actually warning about white people who ardently advocate on behalf of black people and he doesn’t actually have a problem with black people. Some Dilbert strips also seem to mock spirituality and hypnotism, yet Adams himself was a trained hypnotist and had written a couple spiritual philosophy books. He wanted bewildered, shocked attention often later on. It’s hard for me to completely dismiss him as immoral since i don’t think he was all there for a bit. Glad to read he became more faithful and mellow towards the end of his life. Dilbert was something I loved reading especially while I was still young and learning to read. It was good for a kid because I liked the brevity and combination of some big corporate vocab. He may be in purgatory for a while, but I thank him.

  10. Is such repulsion or outrage expressed when African-American commentators suggest White citizens represent a potential threat to their community and suggest it’s safer to keep some distance?

  11. No, because when they say it, its true. And now luckily, we are ALL in the same boat. The Most Transparent Administration in History is helping white people to feel the way black people in the USA have for centuries.

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