Pepe the Frog Is Dead, or So His Creator Hopes

>“A lot of the Pepe controversy has really troubled him,” Mr. Reynolds said of Mr. Furie, who did not reply to requests for comment on Monday. “I think the strip was less about saying Pepe the Frog is dead — because Pepe is a fictional cartoon character — and more about him just sort of processing everything that’s going on.”

>Oren Segal, the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said he appreciated Mr. Furie’s struggle to maintain control of his character. But he had “mixed feelings” about seeing the frog in a coffin.

>“This meme is almost like Elvis,” he said. “Elvis lives on, and Pepe is going to live on regardless of whether we put him in a casket in a cartoon.”

>Pepe was first drawn more than a decade ago, as part of Mr. Furie’s “Boy’s Club,” a comic featuring four main characters. Mr. Furie described them to CBR.com last year: “Andy the wise guy, Landwolf the party animal, Brett the fashionable dancer, and Pepe the chill frog.”

>But by that point, Pepe had already begun to lose his chill. His image had been shared widely in 2015, and in October of that year, Donald Trump tweeted a cartoon that appeared to be a mash-up of himself and Pepe.

>In June 2016, Mr. Furie said he was “proud that Pepe is a celebrity now.” But it was already becoming clear that the frog had been co-opted as a mascot for alt-right extremist groups, and the Anti-Defamation League added the character to a list of hate symbols in September.
...

>“Also referred to as the ‘sad frog meme,’ Pepe the Frog did not originally have anti-Semitic connotations,” the organization said then in a news release.

>“But as the meme proliferated in online venues such as 4chan, 8(gag) and Reddit, a subset of memes came into existence promoting anti-Jewish, bigoted and offensive ideas. And those have spread virally on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere.”

>The statement noted that Pepe was sometimes depicted with a mustache like the one worn by Adolf Hitler, and in a white hood like those worn by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

>In an essay for Time magazine, Mr. Furie expressed annoyance that Pepe had been reduced to a symbol of intolerance.

>“It’s completely insane that Pepe has been labeled a symbol of hate, and that racists and anti-Semites are using a once peaceful frog-dude from my comic book as an icon of hate,” he said.

>“It’s a nightmare, and the only thing I can do is see this as an opportunity to speak out against hate.”

>In October, the Anti-Defamation League announced that it was working with Mr. Furie to rehabilitate the frog’s image with a “social media campaign to #SavePepe.”
...

A whole lot of trouble, effort, and a whole lot of text that changes absolutely nothing.

>Apparently, that didn’t work. So Mr. Furie went for the kill.

>“I can’t lose hope that this is not the final resting place for this character,” said Mr. Segal of the Anti-Defamation League. “I would hate to think that the last word is one of hate.”

>In the single-page strip released on Saturday, Pepe is shown in an open coffin, with his three friends standing over him.

>Landwolf twists open a small bottle of alcohol and pours some over Pepe’s inert face — an irreverent tribute for a character Mr. Reynolds described as “a laconic stoner frog who just wanted to hang out and enjoy his friends and snack.”

>All of the artists featured in the Fantagraphics anthology were asked to contribute statements, and Mr. Furie’s was brief. Boy’s Club is about friendship,” it said. “We are all going to die, so remember to treat your friends nicely and give them lots of hugs.”

>>137810
relax, /bant/ is already making Brett/Blepe edits.

The pepe we know today has evolved and been outside the influence of its original creator for years, if not already a decade. Even back he was mostly known as sadfrog and people were posting him just to say "feels bad man", it already had fuck all to do with the comic.

There is nothing Furie can do as the pepe he's trying to kill isn't, and never was, "his" pepe

>>137820
He doesn't even have the same lip color. I hate Pepe but this just makes Furie look like a butthurt liberal trying to appeal to people's emotions, and we all know the alt-right feels no shame over anything.

>>137820
That's what he get when he let outsiders (immigrant/refugee from /pol/) take over his properties.

>>137806
So now trolls will have Jesus pepe that rose on the 3rd day. Whoop de fucking doo

>>137883
pretty good idea tbh

>Pepe gets drawn
>Becomes "Feels Good man" macro
>Inverted to become "Feels bad man"
>Becomes angry/REEEEEEEE
>Becomes smug Pepe
>Smug Pepe macro eventually becomes Pepe Economy/Rare Pepe
>Pepe starts to become mainstream
>Pepe is so ubiquitous it gets used by /Pol/ and co
>Instantly becomes an "alt-right/Nazi" symbol because association is absolute endorsement
>Original character is killed by author in comic strip
So Pepe is basically confirmed as the greatest meme in the 2010's?

>>137921
>Inverted to become "Feels bad man"
>Becomes angry/REEEEEEEE

There's about a 6 year power gap inbetween these iterations. Pepe was pretty dead until the revival 2 years ago

>>137921
>>137927
stop ruining the internet

Death of the author

>>137883
Except the French ate Pepe's legs last Saturday.

I always saw Pepe as a stand in for whoever was posting or drawing him. So if you're white supremacist then you get white supremacist Pepe, if you're trying to be smug you get smug Pepe, etc etc

>>138038
This. He became a reaction image like Wojack and smug anime girls. He was an instantly recognizable blank canvas which could be worn as a mask when three time was approptiate.

>>137921
It's beyond trollface levels at least :^)