Matt Furie (born August 14, 1979) is an American Visual arts and illustrator. He is known for creating Pepe the Frog, a character from his Boy's Club series that debuted in 2005. The anthropomorphic character became a popular Internet meme in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Furie is from Columbus, Ohio, and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University. In addition to the Boy's Club series, he has created paintings and published the children's book The Night Riders (2012), and the books Mindviscosity (2020), and Trigore Labyrinth (2023).
Early life and education
Matt Furie was born on August 14, 1979, in Columbus, Ohio.
His great-grandfather was from
Sicily. He attended summer classes at the Columbus College of Art and Design and then studied art at Ohio Wesleyan University, earning his BFA in 2001.
Following his graduation, Furie moved to San Francisco
Art and comics
Furie has produced comics and paintings since the early 2000s. His artwork has been described as mixing
psychedelic art imagery with the "charming spontaneity of children's drawings". His creations include "twisted versions" of characters from pop culture.
He once described his style as "kind of a mix between
Hieronymus Bosch and Breughel and then, like,
the Muppets and
the Simpsons."
Furie has exhibited his work in the United States and Europe. He received a Goldie award for best visual artist from the
San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Boy's Club
Furie created the anthropomorphic amphibian character Pepe the Frog around 2004,
first appearing as a character in his zine
Play Time in single-pane comics created using
Microsoft Paint.
The character was a "peaceful frog-dude" with three animal roommates.
He posted the comic in a series of blog posts on
Myspace in 2005.
His comic book
Boy's Club #1 was published by
Tim Goodyear's Teenage Dinosaur in 2006.
The Pepe the Frog character became a popular Internet meme by 2008. Furie's comics were printed in color in the magazine The Believer.
In 2012, Furie published the illustrated children's book The Night Riders. The dialogue-less book, published by McSweeney's, concerns the nighttime stroll of a frog and a rat.
Memefication of Pepe the Frog
By 2014,
memes involving Pepe the Frog had become popular on the internet forums 4chan and 8chan. While most instances of Pepe were not used in a hate-related context, the character was co-opted as a mascot by the
alt-right movement and by white nationalists and was used in memes supporting
white supremacy and
neo-Nazism ideologies. Pepe's image was also used in 2016 by supporters of
Donald Trump's campaign for president. Trump himself and his son Donald Trump Jr. both shared memes using the character in social media posts.
The Anti-Defamation League designated Pepe the Frog a hate symbol in September 2016.
Lawsuits involving Pepe the Frog
To counter the use of Pepe the Frog as a hate symbol, Furie partnered with the law firm
WilmerHale and lawyer Louis W. Tompros. They pursued copyright infringement cases against commercial uses of Pepe, using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and cease and desist letters.
Among the first works to be challenged for copyright infringement was Eric Hauser's 2017 children's book
The Adventures of Pepe and Pede, a book using the Pepe character that had "racist,
Islamophobic and hate-filled themes".
In August 2017, Hauser was forced to stop selling the book and donate proceeds to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Furie sued the news website
InfoWars in March 2018 for copyright infringement for its use of an image of Pepe the Frog in a poster that it sold on its website. In a settlement, InfoWars agreed to pay $15,000 for its use of the image.
Furie announced his intentions to donate the proceeds to the amphibian conservation organization Save the Frogs.
Furie also filed lawsuits preventing the sale of Pepe-related merchandise by the neo-Nazi website
The Daily Stormer and the subreddit r/The_Donald,
and pursued legal remedies against prominent alt-right figures who were using Pepe images, including Richard B. Spencer, Baked Alaska, and
Mike Cernovich.
Furie settled a copyright infringement lawsuit against Jessica Logsdon, who produced paintings including images of a rifle-wielding, masked Pepe in front of the
White House and a Pepe aiming a gun over a U.S. border wall.
In 2019, Pepe the Frog became a symbol of the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests in a context apart from U.S. politics.
Later works
Furie and his partner exhibited their works at the Left Field Gallery in 2018.
He was the subject of the 2020 documentary film
Feels Good Man.
Furie's 2020 book
Mindviscosity was published with
Fantagraphics.
In 2023, he published the book
Trigore Labyrinth, a collaboration with artists Skinner and Will Sweeney.
Personal life
Furie lives in Los Angeles. He and his partner, artist Aiyana Udesen, have a daughter.
External links
