The creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams, announced Tuesday his comic has been canceled by nearly 77 newspapers, which he says are owned by one media company..The Dilbert comic strip — named after its title character struggling to make it up the corporate ladder and often pokes fun at office culture with satirical humor and social commentary — was canceled in nearly 80 markets, its author told Fox News.."It was part of a larger overhaul, I believe, of comics, but why they decided what was in and what was out, that's not known to anybody except them, I guess," Adams said..Lee Enterprises stopped printing it this week. The media company owns nearly 100 newspapers throughout the US..According to Adams' website, Dilbert appears in thousands of newspapers across 57 counties in 19 languages. The comic strip has been one of the most popular for many years and more than 20 million Dilbert-themed books and calendars have been printed..Now that era has come to an end for Dilbert because Adams poked fun at themes related to the workplace. Most recently he took a dig at Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues and the introduction of a new character named "Dave," who's black but identifies as white.."All of the wokeness and anything that permeated from ESG … so that stuff made its way into the business world, and then it became proper content for Dilbert," Adams said.."What I do is I talk about how the employees handle the situation. It's not about the goal of it. But that's enough to make people think I must be taking sides politically," Adams said..He confirmed some newspapers "voiced concerns" after receiving complaints about the content, but he was not sure if that had anything to do with the removal of Dilbert.."The problem is people see even though it's a workplace-related joke, but it's more about how they implement it," Adams said..Adams said the cancellation dealt him a financial blow.."It's substantial," Adams said.
