Where Pepe Came From
Matt Furie drew Pepe around 2004 for a zine called Play Time, and put him into Boy's Club, a small-press comic about four slacker roommates, in 2006. Asked later where the look came from, Furie has pointed to the art collective Paper Rad, which he has described as a wall of psychedelic child-like visual creativity, to Ben Jones's character Alfe, and has said that Pepe even looks like Horace from those comics. He has also named Ren and Stimpy, Beavis and Butt-Head, The Far Side, Jim Woodring's Frank, Mat Brinkman of Fort Thunder, The Simpsons, The Muppets, R. Crumb and Frog and Toad. This facet is the world those drawings came out of.
Part of Pepe
12 moments in this segment.
- - The full "Feels Good Man" comic page. The complete page from Matt Furie's Boy's Club in which Pepe pulls his pants down to his ankles to urinate and answers "Feels good man". Furie has said he first posted the Boy's Club comics to his MySpace blog in late 2005; the page was scanned to 4chan's /b/ in early 2008. Furie has explained the gag came from a cousin who did the same thing as a child.
- - Matt Furie's Boy's Club. Artwork from Boy's Club, the comic series Matt Furie created in 2005 starring the teenage monster characters Pepe, Brett, Andy and Landwolf. Everything that follows in this archive comes out of these pages.
- - Pepe as Furie drew him. Pepe the Frog as he appears in Matt Furie's own work, one of four roommate monsters in Boy's Club, a strip Furie first posted to his MySpace blog before it went to print.
- - The Boy's Club cast. A Boy's Club illustration from the record's Origin section. Furie's strip put its four monster characters in everyday situations built around bodily functions and 1990s catchphrases.
- - Matt Furie profiled on XLR8R TV. The music and culture magazine XLR8R gave an episode of its video series to the cartoonist Matt Furie, years before Pepe the Frog became an internet fixture. The segment is staged as a comic mini-narrative about Furie losing and recovering his ability to draw. It is one of the earliest moving-image records of him as a working underground artist.
- - Neon Knome, Ben Jones's Adult Swim pilot. An unaired pilot made for Adult Swim in 2008 by Ben Jones of Paper Rad, later reworked into The Problem Solverz. Jones is the artist Furie has named directly: asked about Pepe's origins he pointed to Paper Rad, to a Jones character called Alfe, and said that Pepe even looks like Horace from those comics. This is that drawing style moving, a year before Boy's Club reached print.
- - The "Feels good man" panel. The panel that made Pepe a meme: asked why he pulls his pants all the way down to urinate, Pepe answers "Feels good man". The record places its popularisation on 4chan's /b/ board in early 2008.
- - An animated "Feels good man". An animated version of the Feels Good Man image, from the record's account of the panel's early spread on 4chan's /b/ board in 2008.
- - Jacob Ciocci of Paper Rad. A Pittsburgh public-television profile of Jacob Ciocci, a member of the art collective Paper Rad, on an installation made with his sister Jessica Ciocci. Paper Rad's website is the one Matt Furie has credited as a formative influence, describing it as a wall of psychedelic child-like visual creativity, and it is the source he points to when asked where Pepe's look came from.
- - Matt Furie and Jay Howell at Receiver Gallery. A walkthrough of a two-person show by Matt Furie and Jay Howell at the San Francisco space Receiver Gallery. The gallery describes brightly coloured, deliberately childlike drawings of animal and human characters in improvised comic situations. It documents the small-press and gallery scene the Boy's Club comics came out of.
- - Matt Furie answers questions for Fecal Face. A short clip from the run-up to the art site Fecal Face's interview with Matt Furie, in which he answers a question sent in by the artist John Casey. It captures his standing in the Bay Area underground art scene during the Boy's Club years, before the character he drew was known outside comics.
- - Boy's Club, the comic Pepe came from. A Spanish-language reading of Boy's Club, the Matt Furie comic in which Pepe appears alongside his housemates Andy, Brett and Landwolf. It looks at the strip's slacker humour and at the panel that carried the line that later travelled without it.
