The Chronicler Behind the Cubicle Wall: On the Death of Scott Adams

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US-American comic artist Scott Adams died on Tuesday at the age of 68 from cancer. He became world-famous for his comic strip “Dilbert,” published since 1989, about the everyday absurdity in the office of an IT company. At times, more than 2,000 newspapers printed the comic with absurd office stories that Adams received from his fans via email. Dilbert was the first comic to be distributed on the early internet, first via ClariNews in ClariNet, then via the “Dillboard” on the online service AOL.

Adams had publicly announced his illness in May 2025 and stated that the prostate cancer was no longer treatable. In his last videos, he was already severely marked by the disease. Adams' ex-wife Shelly Miles announced his death in an episode of the podcast “The Scott Adams School” and read out a farewell message from him, which she also published on the platform X.

Office Jobs as Inspiration

Scott Raymond Adams was born on June 8, 1957, in Windham, New York, USA. His father worked at the post office, and his mother was a real estate agent. According to his account, Adams began drawing comics at the age of five. After college, he worked in a bank that sent him to management courses. In the “sheer endless” sessions, Adams started drawing comics again.

In 1986, Adams took a job at the telephone company Pacific Bells. Soon, his colleagues began faxing his three-panel comics through the departments. Dilbert was first published in 1989 and was placed in initially 35 newspapers by United Feature Syndicate. Dilbert also appeared on ClariNews, which distributed news from various sources on Usenet along with Adams' email address.

Adams worked at Pacific Bells until 1995 before dedicating himself entirely to the Dilbert universe as a freelance cartoonist. By then, he had already set up a mailing list, the Dilbert newsletter, which he sent to about 20,000 members of “Dogbert's New Ruling Class” (DNRC). Dogbert is Dilbert's intelligent dog, who aspired to world domination.

In German-speaking countries, Adams' Dilbert comics first appeared in October 1994, when “Die Zeit” received a weekly computer page. With the weekly newspaper's website, the translated Dilbert also moved to the internet in 1996.

Dilbert himself was drawn as a typical nerd, without a mouth, with glasses, several pens in the breast pocket of his sleeveless shirt, and a striped tie that bends upwards in the lower third. He lives and works in an open-plan office with separate workstations, the so-called cubicles.

The Dilbert Universe

“Dilbert's lack of social skills is modeled after my own, and his professional skills are those of engineers I knew,” Adams explained in an interview. The experiences of Dilbert and other employees like Wally, Alice, and Asok come from Adams' readers. They all struggle with the department head, who has no name, “so that everyone can imagine their own clueless manager with his absurd measures,” Adams said. His fans nevertheless found a name for him: Pointy-Haired Boss.

In addition to the daily comic strip, Adams published satirical books about (mis)management in the office starting in 1997, beginning with “The Dilbert Principle” and “Dogbert's Top-Secret Management Handbook.” His enormous productivity was slowed down by a neurological disease that forced him to switch from his right hand to his left for drawing. At times, he had to employ other artists for the comic strip.

Racism Controversy

The success abruptly collapsed in 2023 when he was accused of racism from many sides after statements on his YouTube channel “Real Coffee with Scott Adams.” Adams had ranted about a survey that, among other things, asked for agreement with the slogan “It's okay to be white.” After about a quarter of the surveyed black Americans did not agree, he called them a “hate group” and advised his white compatriots to stay away from African Americans.

Numerous newspapers stopped publishing Dilbert comics after these statements, and the popular Dilbert website was also closed and later only accessible by subscription under “Dilbert Reborn.” Adams retreated to his platforms and remained controversial.

(mho)