K.C. Green’s cartoon canine has comforted the internet during a challenging year
When wildfires devastated the West Coast this summer, burning ancient forests to embers and incinerating whole communities off the map, the internet found ironic solace in a familiar cartoon dog.
A photo captioned ‘Noon in San Francisco’ by @pettycommajared on Twitter, which was shared nearly 30,000 times, featured a plush toy perched in a chipper fashion in the foreground against an apocalyptic horizon of flames. Individuals chronically online would immediately recognize the character as social media’s patron saint of misfortune — an anthropomorphic canine sporting a bowler hat and dopey smile, clutching a coffee mug emblazoned with a refrain that bubbles to the top of our timelines in moments of collective misery: This is fine.
“I guess when people feel bad, I kind of profit off of that a little bit. I’m not a big fan of admitting that,” artist K.C. Green said with a nervous laugh. Since its original publication online in 2013, the doomed dog has become one of social media’s most enduring memes, shared to communicate a feeling of denial in times of crisis. “I guess people are looking for something comforting — like, ‘Oh, I’m not alone!’” he said.
The two widely shared panels come from a longer strip called “On Fire,” which appears in Green’s former webcomic series “Gunshow.” In the full strip, the grinning pup leisurely drinks coffee inside a burning house before being melted down to the skull. “I’m fine with the events that are unfolding currently,” the dog assures itself between sips as the flames intensify. “That’s okay. Things are going to be okay.”
Green’s inspiration came while trying to find the right medication dosage to help in his ongoing struggle with depression and anxiety. “For me it was about my antidepressants, but art is a two-way street,” he said. “People bring what they want to it.”
After gaining popularity on Reddit and Imgur in 2014, the two panels quickly became shorthand for a familiar feeling of carrying on with your daily routine while everything around you feels like it’s falling apart. There’s no symbolic weight to the character itself — “It’s fun to draw little animals,” Green said — but the animated pooch at the center of “On Fire” stands for those moments in life when we don’t want to admit that things are, in fact, not fine.
The panels have gotten plenty of mileage online this year, with mental health problems reaching crisis levels in the face of COVID-19. A new study from the World Health Organization found strained critical mental health services in 93% of the world’s countries due to skyrocketing demand related to the pandemic.
“It’s taken an emotional toll on everyone, including myself,” Green said. “It’s been more depressing to stay inside all the time and to not see friends as often as I would like. I just sort of ride it out, which is how I’ve been doing things since ‘This is fine.’”
Green hopes people who are struggling can take the concrete steps necessary to improve their mental health. He recognizes that the coping mechanism of denial, while not without its advantages, isn’t a long-term fix — but he’s glad his creation can act as a balm in the meantime.
“I want people to feel better. I don’t want people to use it as a crutch,” he explained. “But at the same time, crutches help, you know? They help people walk and get around.”
Green currently lives in Massachusetts but developed his love of cartoons while growing up in the Oklahoma City metro area.
“It was pretty boring. I grew up in the suburbs. It wasn’t too much to write home about, which is why I got interested in cartoon illustration,” he said. “I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid and had an overactive imagination with no outlet for it. I started to just draw all the time at school and whatnot, and from there cartoons were my big thing.”
Today, the 33-year-old artist writes an ongoing fantasy-western webcomic called “BACK,” along with a serial adaptation of the original “Pinnochio” children’s story by Carlo Collodi. While he has since wrapped up the “Gunshow” series that gave the internet its greatest coping mechanism, Green recognizes the significance of the two panels he drew in 2013.
“Truthfully, it’s humbling,” he said. “I had no inclination it would be big or anything. It was just Wednesday’s comic.”
Still, watching your work become a meme has its own unique set of frustrations.
“It ebbs and flows in terms of how proud or embarrassed I am of the meme at any given moment,” Green said. “There are times where (someone sends me a version) and I am kind of like, ‘That’s cool. That looks really interesting.’ But a lot of times it’s just people doing their takes with parody, drawing themselves in that style as a joke. That’s fine and all, but I’ve seen it before.”
With the “On Fire” dog more relevant than ever, Green said it’s too early to know the extent of his creation’s impact on his life.
“It still feels like I’m in the middle of it,” he said. “Maybe further down the line, when I’m older, I will look back on it and really have an idea. But it’s hard for me to really see the big picture when I’m still in the middle of the painting.”
But for now? This is fine.
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