NEW YORK, Jan 14 — Scott Adams, the US cartoonist famous for his Dilbert comic strip whose career was later soured by a racism row, has died at age 68, his ex-wife said yesterday.

Adams, who rose to fame in the 1990s with his satirical take on white-collar office life, had been receiving hospice care at his home in northern California after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Ex-wife Shelly Miles announced his passing in an emotional, live-streamed message on Adams’s YouTube channel, Real Coffee with Scott Adams.

US President Donald Trump paid tribute to Adams as a “great influencer” in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“He was a fantastic guy, who liked and respected me when it wasn’t fashionable to do so,” Trump wrote. Adams endorsed Trump before his 2016 election win.

Dilbert was first published in 1989 and followed its title character working as an engineer in a micromanaged office. It was syndicated to some 2,000 newspapers internationally at its peak.

But many publications including the Washington Post dropped the comic after Adams posted a video in 2023 calling Black people a “hate group.”

His rant was prompted by a poll by conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports, whose results he said showed a slim majority of Black respondents agreed with the statement, “It’s okay to be white.”

“That’s a hate group and I don’t want anything to do with them,” Adams said in the video.

“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 later defended his comments and said that he had been using hyperbole.

He won support from right-wing billionaire Elon Musk, who called US media “racist” for their decision to stop publishing the cartoon. — AFP