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Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press 4:45 a.m. ET May 9, 2017

Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character turned Internet meme, has been added to the Anti-Defamation League's database of hate symbols. USA TODAY

Andrew Knight holds a sign of Pepe the frog, a conservative icon, during a rally in Berkeley, California on April 27, 2017.(Photo: JOSH EDELSON, AFP/Getty Images)

The cartoonist who created Pepe the Frog has killed off the character in a rebuke to far-right extremists who transformed a benevolent internet meme into a racist, anti-Semitic symbol.

A Pepe cartoon released Saturday in comic book stores shows Matt Furies creation in an open casket. Furie didnt immediately respond to an email seeking comment Monday.

In a Time magazine essay last year, Furie described Pepe as chill frog-dude who debuted in a 2006 comic book called Boys Club and became a popular online subject for user-generated mutations.

But internet trolls hijacked the character and began flooding social media with hateful Pepe memes more than a year before the 2016 presidential election. Pepe became a tongue-in-cheek symbol of the alt-right fringe movement and its loosely connected brand of white nationalism, neo-Nazism and anti-immigration.

Pepe memes promoting Donald Trumps presidential campaign became so ubiquitous that Trump himself tweeted an image blending his likeness with the cartoon frog in October 2015.

The Anti-Defamation League branded Pepe as a hate symbol in September 2016 and promoted Furies efforts to reclaim the character, with a social media campaign using the #SavePepe hashtag.

Thats a huge challenge, said Oren Segal, director of the ADLs Center on Extremism. It just didnt pick up.

Segal said he doubts Pepes cartoon death will erode his iconic status with the alt-right movement.

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Pepe the Frog declared a hate symbol by Anti-Defamation League

Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who popularized the term alt-right, said it could have the opposite effect.

The artist isnt in control of his work once it enters the culture in the way it has, Spencer said.

Kyle Bristow, a Michigan attorney who founded a self-described alt-right nonprofit educational group called the Foundation for the Marketplace of Ideas, said he already has seen a meme depicting Pepe as Jesus rising from the dead.

The Republicans have an elephant. The Democrats have a donkey. The alt-right has a cartoon frog, Bristow said with a laugh.

Furie wasnt amused by how his creation became an icon of hate, calling it a nightmare in his Time essay.

Before he got wrapped up in politics, Pepe was an inside-joke and a symbol for feeling sad or feeling good and many things in between, Furie wrote. I understand that its out of my control, but in the end, Pepe is whatever you say he is, and I, the creator, say that Pepe is love.

Fantagraphics, which published Boys Club, also published the one-page strip in which Furie killed off Pepe. Fantagraphics spokeswoman Jacq Cohen said she would be surprised if Furie never draws Pepe again but she hadnt discussed his plans for the character with him.

This whole Pepe co-opting experience has been pretty rough on Matt as an independent artist, Cohen said.

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Pepe the Frog croaks: Cartoonist kills off character that became a hate symbol - York Daily Record/Sunday News