The controversial cartoonist Scott Adams, best known as the creator of the long-running strip Dilbert, has died at the age of 68. His death was announced by his former wife, Shelly Miles, during a YouTube livestream. Adams had been open about his battle with metastatic prostate cancer, sharing his diagnosis in May 2025 and stating that he only had months to live.
The news of his passing brings to a close a long and turbulent final chapter of his life, which included a very public plea for medical help. In November 2025, Adams took to X after experiencing delays in receiving treatment for an FDA-approved cancer drug called Pluvicto due to health insurance issues. He publicly requested assistance from President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It must have been a huge relief because Adams was able to book an appointment for the necessary treatment the very next day, thanks to the administration’s public intervention. Despite this assistance, Adams shared in early January 2026 on his YouTube show that the situation was dire. He said that “the odds of me recovering are essentially zero.”
The Dilbert creator is dead
Adams rose to massive fame in the early 1990s by satirizing the soul-crushing realities of white-collar employment. Dilbert quickly became a cultural touchstone, syndicated in thousands of newspapers across 65 countries at its peak. If you ever worked in a cubicle, you know exactly what Adams was talking about. His stories revolved around the eponymous engineer navigating his company’s illogical bureaucracy, alongside his megalomaniacal sidekick, Dogbert, and the famously out-of-touch Pointy-haired Boss.
Adams drew heavily on his own experiences in the corporate world. He studied economics and earned an MBA from UC Berkeley, and he spent years working at places like Crocker National Bank and Pacific Bell. He described his jobs at the bank as “humiliating and low paying,” including stints as a teller who was robbed twice at gunpoint.
He only began drawing Dilbert during the mornings, evenings, and weekends while working at Pacific Bell. Adams said he always planned to leave that world. He told one outlet in 2002, “You get real cynical if you spend more than five minutes in a cubicle. But I certainly always planned that I would escape someday, as soon as I got escape velocity.”
It’s pretty clear he always wanted to be a cartoonist, even applying to a correspondence art course as a pre-teen. He was rejected, though, because “you have to be at least 12 years old to be a famous cartoonist,” as he hilariously recalled.
Adams was a proponent of what he called the “talent stack,” combining multiple common skills like drawing, humor, and risk tolerance in a unique way. He even ventured into food retail at one point, selling vegetarian, microwavable burritos called Dilberitos.
The final years of his career were defined less by his satirical genius and more by his polarizing political commentary. Adams was a vocal supporter of President Trump and often used his YouTube series, “Real Coffee with Scott Adams,” to opine on hot-button issues.
This commentary ultimately led to the widespread cancellation of Dilbert in 2023. During a February 2023 livestream, Adams made extremely controversial remarks about race, including labeling Black people a “hate group” while discussing a public opinion poll. The backlash was immediate and severe, causing dozens of newspapers and his distributor to drop the strip.
Despite the controversy that happened later in his life, Adams left the public with a final, generous message. His former wife read a statement from him following his death.
In the statement, Adams reflected on his time, saying, “I had an amazing life. I gave it everything I had. If you got any benefits from my life, I ask you pay it forward as best you can.” We hope he rests in peace.
Published: Jan 14, 2026 10:00 am