Matt Furie Shares Rarest Pepe of All, Responds to Pepe Memes With a Nightmarish Comic

Pepe the Frog’s creator, Matt Furie, has gone on record before to say that he’s been… let’s say unhappy with how his original, completely innocent Pepe the Frog was immortalized by the internet. One wondered, though, how he’d respond to how the character was co-opted by the alt-right, becoming one of the “Deplorables” of the alt-right that was bandied about not too long ago. I guess one needn’t have wondered too long, as Furie has responded to many of the memes with a comic of his own that he created for The Nib.

It is, to put it lightly, something of an existential crisis of a comic. I’m just going to put it out there right here and now: it could potentially be off-putting if you don’t enjoy cartoon depictions of fangs or blood. But other than that, it’s an interesting comic, one that certainly reflects the surreal, almost nightmarish nature of this entire election cycle. You should absolutely check it out by following the Twitter link above.

Make no mistake: nightmare is about as accurate a summary for this comic as I can muster. That is precisely what this comic is about–a nightmare. It is, after all, titled “To Sleep, Perchance to Meme,” referring to Hamlet‘s soliloquy wherein he muses over death and what comes after one “shuffles off this mortal coil.”

There aren’t any words or dialogue aside from the sound of a heartbeat and some screaming coming from Pepe. One doesn’t really need dialogue, I guess, when looking at the Trump hair, the reference to the “Trump’s mouth looks like his eyes,” and the resulting amalgam these images become–which is, I guess, a thought on the process and lifecycle of a meme on the internet.

It ends with Pepe sinking into his bed, slowly but surely. Maybe Furie’s at that point, too. As unlikely as it is to happen (nothing ever leaves the internet, remember), maybe it is time to put Pepe to bed.

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Jessica Lachenal

Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.

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