The cartoonist who created Pepe the Frog has killed off the character in a rebuke to far-right extremists who transformed a benevolent internet meme into a racist, anti-Semitic symbol.

After a failed attempt to reclaim Pepe last year, creator Matt Furie released a comic on Saturday showing the frog in an open casket.

Furie described Pepe as 'chilled out-frog who likes to eat snacks and talk on the phone [and] smoke weed' before the character was hijacked and branded a hate symbol in 2016, a decade after it first debuted in the comic Boy's Club.

The cartoonist who created Pepe the Frog has killed off the character in a rebuke to far-right extremists who transformed a benevolent internet meme into a racist, anti-Semitic symbol

Creator Matt Furie released a comic on Saturday showing the frog in an open casket. The frog was one of four characters in the comic Boy's Club before it was hijacked

The frog character later took on different forms like Adolf Hitler (left) or a member of the Ku Klux Klan (right) before the Anti-Defamation League called it a hate symbol in September 2016

The character, which became a popular online subject for user-generated mutations, was initially known for the catchphrase, 'feels good man'.

Other iterations of Pepe began circulating the internet, and even celebrities like Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry jumped on the bandwagon.

Drawings of the frog with his eyes filled with tears was a particularly popular meme among others versions used to express everything from smugness to rage.

But internet trolls hijacked the character and began flooding social media with hateful Pepe memes more than a year before the 2016 presidential election.

Pepe became a tongue-in-cheek symbol of the 'alt-right' fringe movement and its loosely connected brand of white nationalism, neo-Nazism and anti-immigration.

Pepe memes promoting Donald Trump's presidential campaign became so ubiquitous that Trump himself tweeted an image blending his likeness with the cartoon frog in October 2015.

The frog character also took on different forms like Adolf Hitler or a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

The character was initially known for the catchphrase, 'feels good man' before it took on numerous other iterations. Pictured right, Katy Perry tweeting the meme in 2014

But internet trolls hijacked the character and memes promoting Donald Trump's presidential campaign became so ubiquitous that Trump himself tweeted an image in October 2015.

The Anti-Defamation League branded Pepe as a hate symbol in September 2016 and promoted Furie's efforts to reclaim the character with a social media campaign using the '#SavePepe' hashtag.

Furie asked people to flood the internet with 'peaceful or nice' versions of Pepe, telling the Guardian in 2016: 'We are in uncharted territory right now. But I have to take some responsibility for him because he’s like my kid or something.'

But the campaign failed, and Oren Segal, director of the ADL's Center on Extremism, said he doubts Pepe's cartoon death will erode his iconic status with the 'alt-right' movement.

Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who popularized the term 'alt-right,' said it could have the opposite effect.

'The artist isn't in control of his work once it enters the culture in the way it has,' Spencer said.

Spencer was famously in the middle of explaining the meaning of a Pepe the Frog pin he fastened to his jacket when he was punched in the face in Washington DC.

The Anti-Defamation League branded Pepe as a hate symbol in September 2016. Furie tried but failed to reclaim the character with a social media campaign

Kyle Bristow, a Michigan attorney who founded a self-described 'alt-right' nonprofit educational group called the Foundation for the Marketplace of Ideas, said he already has seen a meme depicting Pepe as Jesus rising from the dead.

'The Republicans have an elephant. The Democrats have a donkey. The alt-right has a cartoon frog,' Bristow said with a laugh.

Furie wasn't amused by how his creation became an 'icon of hate,' calling it a 'nightmare' in his October 2016 Time essay.

'Before he got wrapped up in politics, Pepe was an inside-joke and a symbol for feeling sad or feeling good and many things in between,' Furie wrote. 'I understand that it's out of my control, but in the end, Pepe is whatever you say he is, and I, the creator, say that Pepe is love.'

Fantagraphics, which published the comic Boy's Club, also published the one-page strip in which Furie killed off Pepe. Fantagraphics spokeswoman Jacq Cohen said she would be surprised if Furie never draws Pepe again but she hadn't discussed his plans for the character with him.

'This whole Pepe co-opting experience has been pretty rough on Matt as an independent artist,' Cohen said.