About

Forty Keks is an image macro series featuring an illustration of the comic book villain Lex Luthor laughing with variations of the caption "forty keks", in reference to the memes "Lex Luthor Took Forty Cakes" and Kek.

Origin

On February 26th, 2014, the earliest known iteration of the image macro was submitted to a thread on 4chan's /co/ (comics and cartoons) board (shown below, left).^[1] The image macro features an illustration of the villain Lex Luthor from the 1976 Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man treasury book (shown below, right).^[6]

Spread

On September 26th, 2014, Imgur^[7] user MangyBlackSheep uploaded a 3×3 grid of the image macro titled "360 keks" (shown below, left). On November 10th, 2014, FunnyJunk^[5] user unclewalrus posted an illustration of an orc with the caption "40KEKS" (shown below, right).

On March 18th, 2015, a Facebook^[2] page titled "Forty Keks" was created. On September 15th, 2015, an edited version of the image macro with the caption "forty top keks" was posted on the /cgl/^[3] (cosplay & EGL) board, in reference to the meme Top Kek (shown below, left). On November 2nd, Tumblr user leonhartleon^[4] submitted a version with the character Noriaki Kakyoin from the anime Jojo's Bizarre Adventure with the caption "forty kaks" (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References