Matt Furie is the creator of the Boy's Club comic series. He was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1979 and is of sicilian descent. He's also the author of the children's book The Night Riders and the creator of Pepe the Frog, originally a character from Boy's Club and later the subject of the 2020 documentary Feels Good Man.
Furie's deadpan comics depict slacker roommates Andy, Brett, Landwolf, and Pepe, along with outsider characters like Fofar and Bird-Dog, in a series of comical vignettes combining laconic psychedelia, childlike wonder, drug-fueled hedonism, and mischievous humor. Meanwhile, The Night Riders takes a more child-friendly approach, following Mystery the Frog and his best friends on an adventure.
The perpetually insouciant glaze of Furie's characters contrast with his sharp verbal and visual wit, making Boy's Club a stoner classic for the Tumblr generation. The comic gained massive internet recognition when Pepe the Frog was widely adopted and remixed by 4chan users, eventually even being referenced by pop stars like Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry. With its irreverent humor, Boy's Club shares a spiritual kinship with Simon Hanselmann's Megahex and Joan Cornellà's Mox Nox, appealing especially to fans of stoner comedies and dark humor.
Furie currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, artist Aiyana Udesen, and their daughter, Ursula. He enjoys long walks with his rat, bubble baths, and hours of Aphex Twin.[1]
History[]
| “ | I try to stay in touch with my inner child and try not to lose that childlike wonder. It's important to me to stay in awe of all the beauty and weirdness in both the natural and the human world. It's been harder to hold on to that viewpoint as I've gotten older but that's been my goal.
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– Matt Furie[2] | ||
As a child, Furie enjoyed watching cartoons, reading books, playing video games and doodling monsters and animals. He describes his aesthetic as a slow evolution that began in childhood, always rooted in escapism.
Furie grew up with a younger brother and two cousins, each one assigned a Ninja Turtle, imagining them as shape-shifters, animals, warriors, and soldiers. He enjoyed drawing the characters he envisioned himself as, which later led to the creation of Boy's Club. Many of his days were spent at his grandmother’s house drawing wars between fruits and vegetables with his brother.[3][4]
Furie attended summer college classes and took fundamental classes in painting, figure drawing, and sculpture at the Columbus School of Art and Design. He later studied art at Ohio Wesleyan University, where he graduated in 2001.[3]
His influences include classic surrealists like Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and Pablo Picasso, as well as contemporary figures such as H.R. Giger and David Lynch. After college, he moved to San Francisco, where he lived for a decade.[3]
Trivia[]
- Furie says that he dreams about emotional affairs with black women on spaceships or riding around in the pouch of a marsupial and that he hopes that that comes out in his art.[3]