Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

Review: Unfollow #17

By Philip Schweier
May 4, 2017 - 09:42

I’m not sure what to make of this issue of Unfollow. Clearly it’s set in the middle of a story arc, so I’m confused as to what’s actually going on, and hard to discern the good guys from the bad. But one thing is clear: Larry Ferrell, for all the billions high-tech social media has earned him, has total disdain for modern technology. He views it as an addiction, and I’m not certain he’s wrong.

In issue #17, Williams and original co-creator have their characters stranded in the forest, with nothing but their own skills and knowledge to shield them from any variety of dangers. Ferrell is presented as the villain of the piece, but I can’t help but wonder: Is he really?

Ferrell may have a tenuous grip on sanity, but as he states in the comic, “The most real world is the one we spend most of our time in.”  So the perception of reality is subjective. And, by extension, our perception of slavery and addiction. Perpetual problems for a digital age.

Back in the early/mid-1990s, the Internet was very static. Videos were in sound bytes that lasted only seconds at the most. Yet one of my friends sacrificed much of her social life at the altar of the PC, spending hours surfing the web. I couldn’t help but see such immersion as unhealthy. Little did I realize how pervasive the web would become. I’ve heard high school students whine about writing essays, when they have the sum of all human knowledge literally at their fingertips.

At the risk of sounding like a crusty old fart, in my day we didn’t have smart phones with access to Google or Wikipedia. Researching a term paper required labor, data mining by hand the local public library’s card catalogs, and the massive index to periodicals.

Unfollow might be a cautionary tale against having too much dependence on technology. Nevertheless, it’s ironic that Comixology offers it in a digital format.  

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12