Popular comic book character Dilbert which chronicles office life has been axed from 77 newspapers in the United States.
Media company Lee Enterprise stopped printing the comic strip this week. Dilbert’s creator, writer, and illustrator Scott Adams said he didn’t know why Dilbert had to be axed.
“Why they decided what was in and what was out, that’s not known to anybody except them, I guess,” he said in an interview with Fox News.
Adams guessed that one reason may be the fact that Dilbert often poked fun at woke issues like the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) which had taken a stronghold in finance.
Also, he added a new character to the comic strip, Dave, who is Black but identifies as white.
The comic pokes fun at both ESG and diversity. For example, one strip reads; “Our ESG score will drop if we open a new factory that adds CO2 to the atmosphere… but we can balance that out by adding more diversity to our board.”
The response from the character Catbert then goes, “How much CO2 do you plan to add?” to which the character then replies, “One non-binary board member’s worth.”
Apparently, some newspapers were not happy with this type of content, but Adams said he is not sure if this was the reason for Dilbert to have been removed altogether.
Dilbert has appeared in thousands of newspapers over a span of 33 years, giving rise to books, calendars, and even a television show that ran from 1999 to 2000.
Other comic book characters that have been stripped include Baby Blues, Red and Rover, Mutts and Bizarro.
Despite the above, Dilbert still has a ‘life’ according to Adams website where the cubicle comic appears in thousands of newspapers across 57 countries in 19 languages.
Adams has a net worth of $75 million. With the Dilbert cuts, likely to see his net worth drop significantly.
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