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The cartoonist who created Pepe The Frog has killed off the character in a comic strip, followingmonths of trying to rehabilitate the frog after it was co-opted by the alt-right.

Artist Matt Furie created the cartoon character in 2005 for the comic book Boys Club, but it was not until the 2016 election that Pepe was adopted by the alt-right online as a mascot for their support of then-candidate Donald Trump.

Since then, the character has achieved notoriety as a symbol for white-supremacy, and was declared a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League.

Furie was devastated by the perversion of his beloved cartoon frog, upset that racists and anti-Semites are using a once peaceful frog-dude from my comic book as an icon of hate.

In a statement put out by Furie and cartoon publisher Fantagraphics in November, they referred to Pepe as an eternally chill comic book character and condemned the illegal and repulsive appropriations of the character by racist fringe groups linked to the alt right movement and the Donald Trump presidential campaign.

Furie launched a #SavePepe campaign to try and wrest back the frog from the alt-right and restore its image as a positive character. After waging the campaign for months, it appears Furie has now conceded defeat, finally killing off the character in a single cartoon strip showing Pepe in a casket.

While the symbolism of killing Pepe in a comic strip may finally put Furies mind at rest, its unclear it will have any effect on the frogs standing as an alt-right hero. On alt-right message boards, commenters celebrated Furies attempts to kill Pepe, claiming he has only made the frog stronger.

[image via screengrab]

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Creator of Pepe The Frog Kills Off Character; Alt-Right Celebrates - Mediaite

Spare a thought for poor Matt Furie, a wonderful indie comics creator whose Boys' Club comics featured a lovable frog called Pepe that was adopted by the neofascist movement (the so-called "alt-right") as a symbol for racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and misogyny.

Furie tried to rehabilitate his creation, which is classed by the Anti-Defamation League as a hate symbol, but did not succeed.

So yesterday, in a single page comic included in the Free Comic Book Day title World's Greatest Comics, Matt Furie killed off his creation.

I really feel for Furie -- it's hard to imagine a shittier fate for one's lovable creation that for it to be transformed into a symbol used by the worst people on the internet to harass and terrorize people. Furie and Fantagraphics published a Boys' Club anthology last year -- you can support him by getting a copy.

Today, on Free Comic Book Day, as part of Worlds Greatest Cartoonists, Furie published a one-page comicof Pepes wake. In the strip, Pepe lies in a casket while his Boys Club friends Landwolf, Brett, and Andy gather round to memorialize him. Though the tone is still marked by irreverent, slacker humor (Landwolf pours booze on Pepes face to toast him), its a clear declaration that Pepe is now dead. The alt-right has killed the joy.

Guess What Happened to Pepe the Frog on Free Comic Book Day [Marykate Jasper/The Mary Sue]

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Matt Furie celebrated yesterday's Free Comic Book Day by killing off Pepe the Frog - Boing Boing

After fighting an uphill battle to reclaim the feel-good image of his popular character after it was perverted by a culture of hate, cartoonist Matt Furie laid to rest Pepe the Frog in Fantagraphics Free Comic Book Day offering, Worlds Greatest Cartoonists. In a one-page strip, Pepe lies in an open casket while Boys Club friends Landwolf, Brett and Andy mourn him in their irreverent fashion.

Furie debuted Pepe and the Boys Club characters on his MySpace blog in 2005 and published four issues of the crews adventures through Buenaventura Press, stories that were collected into a single volume by Fantagraphics in 2016. Pepe, as seen in Boys Club, is a mellow dude getting stoned with his friends, regularly engaging in gross-out humor. But more recently, Pepe has been adopted as an icon and mascot by the extreme conservative alt-right movement, and as memes showing the chill frog promoting white nationalist and anti-semitic messages graduated from 4chan and Reddit into the mainstream, the Anti-Defamation League last year designated Pepe a hate symbol.

RELATED: Meet Pepes Daddy Matt Furie Talks Boys Club

Pepe had starred in more innocent memes for years, his Feels good, man mantra applicable to all manner of situations. But as detailed by the Daily Beast, this began to change in 2015 thanks to a coordinated campaign on a subversive corner of 4chan. A self-identified white nationalist told the Daily Beast that, We basically mixed Pepe in with Nazi propaganda, etc. We built that association. When, later, Pepe was used in images promoting Donald Trumps bid for the presidency, the memes served both as a coded message to the alt-right subculture and, through exposure of their version of Pepe to mainstream audiences, an amplification of the groups more extreme content.

Furie and Fantagraphics denounced the alt-rights use of Pepe. Its completely insane that Pepe has been labeled a symbol of hate, he wrote in an essay for Time magazine. Its a nightmare, and the only thing I can do is see this as an opportunity to speak out against hate.

Before Pepe the Frog was a meme designated a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League, he began his life as a blissfully stoned frog in my comic book Boys Club, where he enjoyed a simple life of snacks, soda and pulling his pants all the way down to go pee, Furie wrote in Time. As early Pepe memes elevated his popularity and Furie was entertaining multiple licensing deals, the cartoonist recalls thinking, Memes rule!

But that was before 2016, a time when our culture evolved to include Internet culture in this election (mostly to seek out the Millennial vote). A smug Trump-Pepe was shared by Trump himself on Twitter in the beginning of the election race, a move I assumed was a nod to young voters. Or perhaps it was a more sinister nod to some fringe, racist groups that used Pepe as a mascot for their agenda. Or just another famous person sharing a Pepe meme because its cool (like Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj did in the past). I have no idea.

Furie ended his essay by stating that Pepe is love, and soon responded with a new comic showing Pepe horrified at what hes become.

Earlier in 2016, around the time Fantagraphics Boys Club collection was released, Furie spoke with CBR about his creations. [T]he characters in Boys Club will always be a part of me. Andy the wise guy, Landwolf the party animal, Brett the fashionable dancer, and Pepe the chill frog they are all tweaked reflections of my own values and sensibilities, Furie said at the time. Their personalities unfolded and blossomed as time went on, but just like the person in your life that you love the most, one day they will die. And death can be as beautiful as life, because its what makes life important.

Now, it would seem, that day has come. The rehabilitation of Pepe was always going to be a struggle, and its hard to imagine Furie taking much joy in creating new Pepe strips knowing that, whatever his own intentions, the character would read through tinted lenses.

While its unlikely Pepes official death will stop extremists from co-opting his image, this was, perhaps, the most effective way for Furie to reclaim his character; Pepes soul has returned to his creator. Rest in Peace.

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Pepe the Frog Is Dead: Creator Kills the White Supremacist ... - CBR - CBR (blog)

Mashable

Pepe the Frog became a hate icon so his creator killed him off Mashable Pepe the Frog is dead, killed off by his own creator after he watched Pepe turn from a wholesome meme into a symbol co-opted by neo-Nazis for the alt-right. Pepe was created by cartoonist Matt Furie back in 2006 for his comic Boy's Club, but after ...

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Pepe the Frog became a hate icon so his creator killed him off - Mashable

Days after the first round of the French presidential election in April, an anonymous user on the messaging board 4chan waged war total meme war, that is against centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron.

We must bombard French social media with pro [Marine] Le Pen propaganda, to remind the French who is on their side, the user wrote.

Avideo embedded in the 4chan post urgedusers to generate memes depicting Macron as Marie Antoinette. "Make Macron look ridiculous. Make him look elitist," the male voice in the videoinstructed.

Hundreds of userscommented in support of the campaign. Many of them"had been very active during the US presidential election and ...took consistently strongly right-wing views, particularly anti-Islamviews," said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow for information defense at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, who's beenstudyingthese efforts and their reach.

But their efforts don't appear to be resonating with French voters.

"There was very little penetration there," Nimmo said, adding that much of the content was "lost in translation" quite literally, some of the content was not translated to French.

And some of it included images that could be deemed especially offensive by French audiences, like images intertwining Le Pen with Pepe the Frog,a meme that came to be associated with the extreme far-right during the US presidential election.

"If you think of the English language connotation of referring to the French as frogs it's not complimentary, and the French are aware of it," Nimmo said. "Marketing anything in a different country, in a different language, in a different culture is hard work. And frankly, the alt-right is not usually known for its cultural sensitivity."

Other social media generated by English-speaking alt-right internet users to influence the election has also largely failed to gain traction in France.According to a review by The New York Times, "more than one-third of posts linked to certain political hashtags originated from the United States, although few went viral in France." The French academic who conducted the Times review also found that about two-thirds of Twitter messages using the hashtag MFGA (Make France Great Again) originated in the US.

"The irony is that much of alt-right is strongly nationalist and strongly anti-globalization. And what it's doing in these campaigns is trying to act as an international and globalized effort to support nationalist and anti-globalist people in other countries," Nimmo said."Right there,there's a philosophical problem."

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The US alt-right 'meme war' to sway the French election is failing - PRI