Dilbert creator Scott Adams' ex-wife Shelly Miles shocked fans tuning in to his web show "Real Coffee With Scott Adams" on January 13, 2026, by announcing the cartoonist's death. A tearful Shelly broke the news to viewers that Scott was "not with us anymore" before reading a statement that the author penned before his death from prostate cancer. "If you are reading this, things did not go well for me," Scott wrote. "I have a few things to say before I go. My body failed before my brain. I am of sound mind as I write this January 1, 2026. If you wonder about any of my choices for my estate or anything else, please know that I am free of any inappropriate influence of any sort, I promise." He added, "I had an amazing life, I gave it everything I had. ... Be useful and please know that I loved you all to the very end." The Most Shocking Celebrity Deaths of All Time: Diane Keaton and More Throughout his career, Adams turned his workplace cartoon Dilbert into a pop culture phenomenon and topped the New York Times bestseller list with his 1996 book The Dilbert Principle. However, Adams was also a controversial figure whose comic was dropped by newspapers in 2023 after suggesting white people "get the f*** away" from Black people. Keep scrolling for more information on Adams' life. Who Was 'Dilbert' Creator Scott Adams? After receiving a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986, Scott Adams worked a series of corporate jobs. He started spoofing workplace culture with the comic strip Dilbert while working at Pacific Bell. The comic - which was first published in 1989 - parodied white-collar culture through the eyes of frazzled engineer Dilbert, his hapless corporate manager Pointy-Haired Boss and his pet Dogbert, who was constantly devising plots to take over the world. "Dilbert's look is based on a real person, who doesn't know it. I worked with him but didn't know him well," Adams told Publishers' Weekly in 2008. "He just had an interesting potato-shaped body that was fun to draw. He started as a doodle at my day job at a bank. Dilbert's lack of social skills is modeled on my own personality; his professional skills are a composite of engineers I have known. And Dogbert is partly based on a family dog who never once came when I called, and partly on my own evil side." "Dilbert" TV Show Everett Collection Adams eventually became a cartoonist full time when he was laid off by Pacific Bell in the 1990s. At the height of Dilbert's popularity, the comic strip was read in approximately 2,000 newspapers worldwide. Dilbert was spun off into a series of products and projects of varying degrees of success, including video games, toys and an animated TV series that ran on UPN for two seasons between 1999 and 2000. (Home Alone's Daniel Stern voiced Dilbert in the TV show, while comedians Chris Elliott and Larry Miller played Dogbert and Pointy-Haired Boss, respectively.) In later years, he authored books on self-improvement and religious fantasy. Was 'Dilbert' Creator Scott Adams Married? Scott Adams married his first wife, Shelly Miles, on board a yacht in San Francisco Bay in July 2006. He became a stepfather to Shelly's two young children, Savannah and Justin, from a prior relationship. "I hate to say stepdad because I hate the 'step' word. I'm a bonus dad," he told the East Bay Times at the time. Scott and Shelly divorced in 2014 on amicable terms. In October 2018, Scott announced that Shelly's son, Justin, had died at age 18 from a fentanyl overdose, per The Mercury News. (According to the Mayo Clinic, fentanyl is an "injection used to relieve severe pain during and after surgery," which should only be administered under care of a doctor.) The cartoonist explained to viewers on his webshow that "the little boy I raised from the age of 2" had been trying to "score Xanax" but was given a deadly cocktail of fentanyl instead. Scott recalled the horror of seeing "my dead, blue, bloated son taken out on a stretcher in front of his mother and biological father." Just over a year later, Scott revealed on his podcast in December 2019 that he was engaged to Kristina Basham. They tied the knot July 11, 2020. The Dilbert creator's second marriage was short-lived, as he confirmed on his podcast in March 2022 that he and Basham were getting divorced. "I am separated, slash going through a divorce," he told podcast listeners. "[The] only reason I'm telling you that is if you see my ex-wife on a date or me, don't worry about it. Because it's a process that's been going on for some time." Why Was 'Dilbert' Creator Scott Adams Controversial? Scott Adams made a series of provocative statements over the years and became known for his right-wing political views. He was accused of sexism for a since-deleted 2011 blog post where he wrote about the perceived differences between men and women. "The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and t