Matt Furie

Matt Furie (born August 14, 1979) is an American visual artist 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 where he worked in the toy department of the store Community Thrift.

Art and comics Furie has produced comics and paintings since the early 2000s. His artwork has been described as mixing psychedelic imagery with the "charming spontaneity of children's drawings". His creations include "twisted versions" of characters from pop culture. 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. His comic book Boy's Club #1 was published by Tim Goodyear's Teenage Dinosaur in 2006. He later published Pepe comics with the website The Nib in 2015 and 2016.

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. 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,

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.