“I didn’t even try and hold on to that copyright,” Green says.
#Guess who meme creator series#
In 2006, he published a comic for his series Horribleville in which a character draws an anthropomorphic phallus and names it “Dick Butt.” The image of Dick Butt went viral in certain circles and Green quickly lost control of it. It also didn’t hurt that Green had already learned from past mistakes. He says the trick is vigilance, luck, and not being afraid to steal from your thieves.
What makes Green’s story different from those of folks like Furie is that he has, astoundingly enough, been able to harness the meme’s success for profit and greater recognition, and is surprisingly renowned as its creator. Across social media, we see him sitting in a burning room with a dumb smile on his face, musing to himself, “This is fine.” It’s a simple, potent image that captures the tenor of our chaotic times and the reactions of those who refuse to accept awful reality, and it’s been used far and wide. The figure was initially named Question Hound but has since been dubbed the This Is Fine Dog. Another cartoonist, KC Green, similarly saw one of his characters meme-ified for political purposes. Pepe is infamous, Furie is obscure, and the connection between the two has largely been severed.Īnd yet, there’s a counterexample that should inspire hope for anyone whose content has been ganked for the lulz. Furie has made noble efforts to stem the tide, from symbolically killing the character off to suing Alex Jones (they settled), but the damage is mostly done.
The character was first conceived by cartoonist Matt Furie for his ongoing comics series Boy’s Club, but its visage, for whatever reason, started being used by members of various online forums, then became popular on 4chan, then became a leading icon of the alt-right and an Anti-Defamation League–identified hate symbol. You make something, it gets popular without credit, and you watch it slip through your grasp.
It’s taken for granted that a meme, once set free, will never return to the cage of copyright and creator control.
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