Matt Furie: Boy’s Club Revisited

Cartoonist Matt Furie‘s deadpan Boy’s Club comics showcase slacker roommates Andy, Brett, Landwolf, and Pepe the Frog in a series of comical vignettes. These recently acquired vending machine artworks from 2010 are among Furie’s first commercially sold drawings, forming the foundation of one of the most popular memes of the 21st Century. 

Matt Furie (b. 1979) earned a BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2001. His artwork has been described as mixing psychedelic imagery with the charming spontaneity of children’s drawings. His creations include prophetic riffs on pop culture in a style described as a mix between Bosch and Breughel in Muppets-meet-Simpsons drag. Furie’s work has featured in sold-out exhibitions in the United States and Europe and he received a Goldie award for Best Visual Artist from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Furie created the anthropomorphic amphibian character Pepe the Frog, which had become a popular internet meme by 2008 and was the most shared and recognizable meme on earth by 2014. When the character was co-opted as a mascot by the alt-right Furie filed a succession of lawsuits and springboarded the #SavePepe campaign as documented in the Award-Winning film, Feels Good Man. The success of Furie’s litigation is evidenced in the adoption of Pepe by the 2019-2020 Hong Kong Anti-Fascism Protests. 

Truth be told, Matt Furie is a superhumanly gentle person. Per the UK’s Guardian Newspaper, “Imagine Bob Ross with a skateboard… Furie’s work is cartoony, but it also has a palpable, dimensional quality.”

But the crux of Furie’s cartooning is his simple, altruistic philosophy:
“Everybody has the potential within them to be smart, good people. You can really change somebody with just a few nice words.”