Scott Adams, the East Bay cartoonist who became internationally beloved for his “Dilbert” comic strip that satirized the absurdity of corporate culture, has died of prostate cancer at age 68, his first ex-wife revealed Tuesday.
In a livestream of the “Real Coffee With Scott Adams” podcast, Shelly Miles said that his death came peacefully, as he was surrounded by loved ones after he had moved into hospice a day or so earlier. Miles also read a final letter he had written, dated Jan. 1, revealing that he was of sound mind and had converted to Christianity after long describing himself as agonistic.
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“If you are reading this, things did not go well for me,” Adams wrote in his characteristically forthright way. “My body failed before my brain. … 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. I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and look forward to spending an eternity with him.”
Adams first revealed that he had cancer in May, saying that it was the same form of cancer that President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with. He also revealed that it had metastasized to his bones.
While Adams was remembered fondly by legions of fans Tuesday, for a comic that captured white-collar malaise before “Office Space” and “The Office,” he was become a controversial figure in American life. His comic strip, started in 1989, appeared in more 2,000 papers at its peak, allowing him to launch a series of bestselling books, a short-lived TV show and lines of merchandise.
But it all came crashing down in 2023, when he was dropped by hundreds of newspapers in 2023 after he called Black Americans a “hate group” and said that white people should “just get the hell away” from them. He later defended his remarks as hyperbole.
Even before that, Adams began to alienate some fans with his public support of President Donald Trump, starting in 2015, when he predicted that Trump had a 98% chance of winning the presidency based on his persuasion skills. After Trump’s election victory in 2016, Adams’ Twitter following grew by more than 50%, according to the Pleasanton Weekly, his hometown newspaper.
Yet, despite his public support for Trump, Adams told Pleasanton Weekly he still remained liberal or libertarian on certain social issues, including supporting the legalization of recreational marijuana and opposing government interference on women’s right to abortion.
A native of Windham, a small town in upstate New York, Adams initially came to the Bay Area to work in business and finance, first working as a teller for Crocker National Bank in San Francisco, where he said he was twice held up at gunpoint. He then worked for Pacific Bell while he earned an MBA at the Haas Business School at UC Berkeley.
His time in the corporate world and his experience around “engineering groups” provided ideas for his “Dilbert” comic, which he would wake up to draw at 4 a.m. so that he could put in a full day of work at his day job. By 1996, “Dilbert” was being published in more than 800 newspapers around the country, and Adams became a full-time cartoonist who had also released his first book, “The Dilbert Principle.” He became famous for including his email address in all his drawings, which allowed fans to write in and suggest new ideas for his comic strip, according to the Washington Post.
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In his final statement, Adams said he wanted to explain “my life.” He said, “For the first part of my life, I was focused on making myself a worthy husband and parent as I find as a way to find meaning that worked. But marriages don’t always last forever, and mine eventually ended in a highly amicable way.”
Adams first married Shelly Miles in 2006, and became a stepfather to her two children, Savannah and Justin, the latter of whom died of a fentanyl overdose in 2018 at age 18. The couple divorced in 2014, and Adams said the two remained friends. In 2020, Adams married Kristina Basham, a model and baker. But Adams announced in 2022 that that the two were divorcing.
Adams said he always tried to look “for ways I could add the most to people’s life one way or another.” He said he did so by evolving from cartoonist to author of what he hoped “would be useful books” on various topics, including self-improvement and religion.
“By then, I believe I had enough life lessons that I could start passing them on,” he said.
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