Time to work on Friday’s.” He moved on.Īccording to the meme archaeologists at Know Your Meme, on April 26 of that same year, the famous first two panels appeared on 4chan’s sub-board for retro video games. Green says he doesn’t really check web analytics or social metrics, so he didn’t have any idea whether the comic was popular: “I was happy that it was there,” he says, “but it was also like, I’m on a schedule. “That’s okay, things are going to be okay,” he says as he looks at the limb. After that, he continues: “I’m okay with the events that are unfolding currently.” He takes a sip from his mug and his arm catches on fire. The first two panels of “On Fire” are the most famous: We see the dog among the flames, sitting silently, then we see him in close-up, saying his now-trademark line. Green often used the hapless canine as a stand-in for himself, so it only made sense to have him feature in this tossed-off exploration of placidity in the face of disaster. He chose to have the strip star Question Hound, the series’s unofficial mascot since the very first strip of Gunshow, who was based on a cartoon dog that Green used to doodle as a kid. Whatever the subconscious underpinnings of that freewriting were, Green translated them into an efficient six-panel comic, entitled “ On Fire,” which he published on January 9, 2013. “A part of me wondered if the pill regimen would get rid of my emotions, or something like that.” Let’s use it.” Today, he looks back and suspects the origin of the comic had something to do with his then-recent adjustment to taking antidepressants: “It felt like things around me were … like I was ignoring the problem, basically,” he remembers. That was all it took for me to write down an idea. I’m completely okay with all of this.’ Then someone’s face slops off because they’re in a burning place, or whatever. I believe that document was literally just I wrote down the actual lines of ‘This is fine. “I used to write a lot by just opening an empty document and typing things that popped out of my head, things that were just stuck in my head and just whatever,” Green says. Take, for instance, the origin of the 2013 comic that spawned the “This Is Fine” meme. A subsequent series, Gunshow, came into being in 2008, and the cartoonist proceeded to build it with a haphazard creative approach. The success of Dick Butt didn’t enrich Green, and he simply plugged away at his comics. I’ve actually let go of the copyright on that, so idiots can use it as much as they want.” Nevertheless, even though he conceded defeat, he’d seen what the arena looked like.įrom KC Green’s Horribleville. “To be honest, the type of people who like using that image are the people I don’t want to talk to. “I didn’t even try and hold on to that copyright,” Green says. 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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