Excuse Me While I Wag

A great cartoonist passed away. His name was Richard Thompson, and he drew "Cul de Sac" from 2007 to 2012 until Parkinson's disease ravaged him and he died in 2016.

All joking aside, "Dilbert" creator Scott Adams passed last month. I was a fan of the strip growing up, though it became apparent as time went on that Adams was a difficult, unpleasant man. Circa 1996-97 I had the comic strip collections, a subscription to his quarterly newsletter, even the Dilbert and Dogbert dolls. Entering puberty, I latched on to Adams' --and technically Dogbert's-- cynicism and heavy sarcasm. (The animated series that ran on UPN in 1999-00 is a lost gem, but I'd attribute most of that to Larry Charles.) If nothing else, I am grateful that Adams and his creation gave me an early warning about the drudgery and absurdity of corporate America. Dilbert the milquetoast engineer, however was an avatar for logic in an increasingly illogical world.

Alas, like so many things in pop culture in recent years, there's the matter of separating the art from the artist. I am acquainted with people that met and knew Scott Adams; only "Pearls Before Swine" creator Stephan Pastis had anything kind to say upon his death. Interviews and second-hand interactions suggested a difficult and unpleasant man, this 2015 blog entry suggested that he was steadily going off the deep end, lost his sense of irony, or both. Then Adams started questioning the scope of the Holocaust, made highly misogynist remarks, and most pivotally, a COVID/vaccine skeptic, and finally a casual racist. After his syndicate dropped him post-haste, "Dilbert" moved online (behind a paywall) and Adams hosted a livestream until he randomly decided you can treat terminal cancer with horse dewormer.

Scott Adams was probably the last newspaper cartoonist to ever become a household name. Today's funnies are dominated by decades-old "heritage" strips where the creator is long dead, with little room for young or new talent. Part of that is because of the economics of modern media, but that's another blog for another time. For a few years in the 90s, Adams was a breath of fresh air. He also had a particularly strange, self-inflicted fall from grace.  

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