Once the article made the claim that the was the greatest comic author of all time, it became clear that the article is overanalyzing the man. one aspect proving the overanalysis is the wild length of the article beyond that point.

Just like how Jim Davis stumbled upon a reasonably funny, widely relatable gag that can be repeated for decades with minimal consequences, the success in Dilbert was being the first newspaper comic to live in the topic of corporate bureaucracy.

In case we all forget how newspaper comics work in a digital world of curated content, they are all successful based on broad appeal. Each newspaper has approximately two pages of funny content and each strip has to appeal to a large subset of readers if not all of them.

Family Circus is a perfect example. Dog funny. Reader like dog. Dog funny. Kids say funny thing with dog. Reader has kids and dog.

The topic of “my boss is incompetent” is just as widely appealing as “my cat is lazy and selfish.”

With all that context established we have to acknowledge that Scott Adams was a pretty normal guy with no particularly strong skills.

So as the article points out, when he pivoted his life to other endeavors, his limitations are strikingly apparent.

This is where I start not liking the guy. He has a smarter than thou attitude especially later in life when in reality, he is not himself particularly smart. I would stop short of calling him a narcissist but some vibes are there. He got lucky to be the guy who got a syndication deal at the right time making a specific type of comic. If he was born 20 years later he’d be a nobody, as the comic industry has completely changed.

His craft was largely surpassed by web comic authors with more specific audiences and more intelligent writing.