Pepe the Frog was first created as a character in a comic strip called "Boy's Club" by comic artist Matt Furie.  The first edition of Boy’s Club was created in 2005 and published in 2006 (Mazur). Though there were four main characters--anthropomorphic teenage monsters named Pepe, Brett, Andy, and Landwolf--Pepe the Frog catapulted to popularity and brought the comic with him (Furie). The comic was relatively popular before the meme became popular, but now, eleven years later, the first edition of the comic book in the series is for sale on amazon for $103.27, much higher than it’s market price before the meme took off (Boy's Club #1).

The first widespread use of Pepe the Frog as a meme was in 2008 on 4chan, a forum-based website. A smiling picture of Pepe the Frog was posted with a speech bubble that read “Feels good man (Triple Zed).” The image originated from a comic panel where Pepe dropped his pants all the way to his ankles in order to urinate (Furie). In terms o rhetorical velocity, this cropping of the original work by a third party to share only a piece of the image is the first instance of recomposition. The new idea, or meme, is removed from its original context and has become an independent piece of media. 

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“Feels good man” was the most popular, if not the only, use of Pepe as a meme until 2009, when his mouth was photoshopped upside down to be a frown, with the speech bubble reading “Feels bad man (Triple Zed).”  This would be a clear example of a third party recomposing the original composition even further to fit a context that the author could not foresee or control. This version of the meme was still primarily in use on 4chan, but in 2011 Furie was interviewed by the popular site “Know Your Meme” regarding the spread of Pepe and how he felt about it. At the time, his opinion was fairly positive, although Pepe had taken on a life of his own, different than his original creation (Mazur). ​

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It wasn’t until 2014 that Pepe made the jump to other meme heavy social media sites such as Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit, and Facebook. Since then, Pepe has been used in several different ways, evolving into multiple reaction images displaying a range of emotions to fit contexts outside of its intended use (Triple Zed).