It was a good run, but all good (and bad) things must come to an end. Pepe The Frog is dead, thanks to its creator, cartoonist Matt Furie. The Verge reports that Pepe — who was appropriated as a hateful white supremacist meme/mascot and even retweeted by Donald Trump — was killed off by Furie (with a funeral) in a one-page installment of his Boy’s Club series on Free Comic Book Day. The cartoon depicts Pepe laying in a casket next to a framed picture of himself as, we assume, friends and family pay their respects.
Once just your run-of-the-mill cartoon, Pepe quickly became a problem as the far-right increasingly used the meme for harm. The hate-filled message Pepe was used to promote picked up so much steam before last November’s presidential election that the Anti-Defamation League was forced to label the cartoon as an anti-Semitic hate symbol.
Furie, a Hilary Clinton supporter in November’s election, has expressed his displeasure with the use of his good-natured cartoon for bad in the past. He even took steps towards rehabilitating Pepe’s image with a #SavePepe campaign meant to spread love, not hate. In the end, he was far too late in his quest to say his beloved frog, and now Pepe is dead. In the comics anyway. He’s probably still a meme, but at least this illustrative video will live to tell the story someday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q6n1Yj3kRs
(Via The Verge)