Horace

been digging into the actual origin of Pepe and I think Horace is by far the best narrative here in 2020 Matt Furie did a Reddit AMA with the creators of Feels Good Man and was asked about the inspiration behind his work Matt mentioned a bunch of influences, but specifically said he was really inspired by the “Alfe” comics by Ben Jones and then added: «Pepe even looks like ‘Horace’ from those comics.": reddit.com/r/MemeEconomy/com… this is the important part people keep confusing Alfe and Horace Alfe is one of the characters / the name associated with those early Ben Jones comics, and those characters later became Alfe, Horace and Roba in The Problem Solverz. The Problem Solverz literally follows those three characters: loathsomecharacters.miraheze… but Matt didn’t say Pepe looks like Alfe he specifically named Horace and when you actually put Horace next to Pepe it makes complete sense. The face, eyes, mouth, head shape and overall human/frog looking expression are insanely similar so the thesis is pretty simple: Pepe obviously came from a mixture of inspirations, Matt says that himself. but if you’re looking for the single character with the strongest direct connection to Pepe, Horace is probably the cleanest one because the creator of Pepe literally pointed at him himself and said Pepe looks like him. imo if people start digging into the “character that inspired Pepe” narrative, Horace is the obvious pick

the more I dig into Horace the better the narrative gets this isn’t just based on Matt Furie saying Pepe even looks like Horace Ben Jones created Alfe, Horace and Roba around 1996, with some of the characters existing even earlier. So Horace was already around almost a decade before Pepe was created then in the early 2000s Paper Rad started putting all of this weird DIY comic/animation stuff online and Matt Furie was literally one of the people consuming it he later said he was “really inspired” by the comics on Paper Rad, especially Ben Jones Alfe comics, before specifically pointing out that Pepe looks like Horace in a completely separate 2016 interview, Furie talks about his early influences and says he got really into Paper Rad and Ben Jones in particular he basically explains that Jones simple style of making funny comics showed him that comics didn’t need huge stories, action sequences or tons of dialogue it made Matt think: Oh! I could do a comic. theguardian.com/books/2016/s… and in another interview about the actual creation of Boy’s Club, Matt again says he was “big into Paper Rad at the time” and that these influences helped shape the content/look of the characters while he was developing them: vice.com/en/article/pepe-fro… > Horace existing years before Pepe > Matt heavily consuming Ben Jones/Paper Rad while developing his own comics > Matt saying Ben Jones literally helped inspire him to make comics > Matt saying Paper Rad influenced the creation/look of Boy’s Club > and finally Matt himself directly saying: “Pepe even looks like Horace.” imo this makes Horace way stronger than just some character that happens to resemble Pepe it’s basically a documented creative lineage Ben Jones/Paper Rad -> Horace -> Matt Furie/Boy’s Club -> Pepe