Wiz Dizzler (2017)

Research project, webcomic, and website

Wiz Dizzler was an extended project exploring the rising popularity of a green frog as a symbol, and its application and history within and without alt-right communities. An alternate story is crafted through an online webcomic, using expanded histories, humour, gentleness and generosity.

This project started with the research paper “For The Love of Slime: the frog as a symbol of the American Alt-Right”. Here I traced the history of the green frog as a symbol of extremist right leanings, looking at how the image of a beloved stoner, Pepe the Frog, was coopted and spread as a political symbol. For me this inquiry was personal—I loved Pepe’s comics and what they stood for: acceptance of weirdness, toilet humour, and strange friendships. This somehow made me compassionate towards the trolling communities responsible for Pepe’s transformation—there was something about their choice of such a gross but loveable outsider as a symbol that made me wonder, and still makes me wonder,  if there are ways to fight the alt-right that are not about polarization, but instead use tools of inclusion, belonging, and systemic change.

I created the comic Wiz Dizzler as a response to this research, shortly after Trump was elected. I wanted to explore an alternate reality, to think about ways of putting other stories out into the same sphere. A comic in response to a comic. Wiz Dizzler features an affable wizard who finds a frog trolling on the internet. He calls his witch friends in to help him, and when pressed about the frog’s origins, realizes that he himself had been the source of the situation, by upholding power imbalances and acting dismissively. The witches agree to help, and begin to enact a plan.

The tone of the comic is compassionate, and tries to tell a different story, one that is based on hope and not polarization. The full comic can be read here.