Broken Frontier

Gerard Jones and Mark Badger's Networked: Carabella on the Run is a comic book with a whole lot of head and very little heart. This isn’t surprising when considering the origins of the Carabella character: she’s the creation of Privacy Activism, an online group that’s trying to raise awareness about confidentiality on the Internet. It’s a worthy issue when considering the current deal being struck by Verizon and Google over Net Neutrality coupled with Google CEO Eric Schmitt’s recent comments that anonymity online will soon be a thing of the past.

But messages and creativity don’t always couple well together, and Networked is an excellent example. The plot points of this comic book are far too obvious and deliberate, making it hard to enjoy beyond its proselytizing message. As I read it, I felt like I was trudging through an over-priced self-help booklet picked up in a free medical clinic rather than a comic book released by an independent publisher.

Carabella’s past incarnations over on the Privacy Activism website consists primary of Flash computer games. But here in Networked, we’re given the back story: for anyone who isn’t aware, Carabella is a paranoid, blue-skinned inter-dimensional alien who is hiding out on Earth. She’s from Earth, too, but a different kind of Earth. Stephen Hawking explained it once on an interesting Science Channel program I watched a few months ago, but don’t even ask me to try and explain it again. But rest assured, it made sense at the time.

This is Carabella’s reality—she’s hanging out on Earth, a stowaway from her own Earth, and is completely desperate to stay off the grid. As Networked opens, we meet her at the beginning of her freshman year in college. We native Earthlings can barely afford college, so how an azure alien with no American citizenship or steady cash flow pulled off getting into academia, we’ll never know. But because of her exotic look, she makes fast friends despite her overt apprehension towards their technological habits. What can I say? Young people simply adore cell phones and social networking.

But Carabella doesn’t, and she runs from it at all costs. Her friends find it odd, but who are they to judge? Eventually, she meets up with an amateur engineer who is designing special shoes that can log onto the Internet, and she falls head-over-heels for the savvy, young stud. I’d say it is cheeky irony that Carabella’s first love is a dude who’s creating the world’s leading Web device, but that’s not how it comes off. It’s so overt, it’s bumbling. Writer Jones doesn’t even try to make the story original from this point forward. It’s just a series of “Yup, you guessed it” moments.

Eventually, Carabella’s friends learn about her alien origin and a typical series of chase sequences ensues. I seem to recall what Kurt Vonnegut once sarcastically said about Joseph Campbell’s analysis of the epic hero’s journey: “Hero gets into trouble, hero gets out of trouble.” I found that statement glib when I first read it, but now it perfectly sums up this book: Carabella gets into trouble, Carabella gets out of trouble. No real attention is paid to the details on the side—everyone is a college freshman, and yet where are the classrooms, homework assignments, and tests?

Simply put, I agree with the message of Networked: Carabella on the Run, but the 134-page story it took to convey it was a bore. Everything in it was in total service to the message of Privacy Activism without showing any attention to the creativity and imagination needed to create a genuine science fiction narrative. This is a marketing stunt, not a comic book.