Matt Furie Kills Pepe: A Symbolic Funeral (2017)

In May 2017, exhausted by the political hijacking of his creation, Matt Furie published a single-page comic in which Pepe the Frog was depicted lying dead in an open casket, his friends from Boy’s Club mourning him. Furie called it Pepe’s funeral. He hoped killing the character symbolically would distance him from the hate groups that had stolen his image.

It didn’t work. The hate groups kept using Pepe. But the funeral comic launched a new chapter: Furie became a public advocate for reclaiming Pepe. He sued companies for using Pepe in racist contexts, fought to get the ADL classification reconsidered, and worked with documentary filmmakers to tell Pepe’s real story. The 2020 film Feels Good Man documented this fight. Furie’s effort to save his frog became a parable about who owns culture in the meme age.