Followed Review: Patrick Dunn Delivers a Creepy Digital Doppelgänger Nightmare

WEPA! Now this right here is the kind of indie horror that does not kick your door down with a machete and a thunderstorm soundtrack. Nah, Followed slides into your notifications like a cursed DM at 2:13 in the morning and whispers, “Yo… you sure that’s you?” Patrick Dunn takes one of the most modern, everyday anxieties we all pretend we are too cool to worry about being watched, copied, tracked, tagged, posted, duplicated, and digitally haunted and turns it into a lean, grimy, pencil-shaded nightmare with serious back-of-the-neck electricity.

Followed introduces us to Jonah, a man who looks like he is trying to function in normal life while carrying a whole haunted house in his chest. The setup is wickedly simple: he starts seeing social media posts featuring someone who looks exactly like him. Not “kind of” like him. Not a blurry cousin from another borough. This is his face. His eyes. His smile. His body language. His whole personal brand, baby except this other version of Jonah is showing up in places Jonah has never been, with people Jonah has never met, living a life that feels just close enough to reality to make the brain start chewing on itself. That is where Dunn’s story grabs you. It does not need a monster roaring in the shadows right away, because the true monster is uncertainty. And uncertainty, when seasoned correctly, hits harder than a Brooklyn pothole in February.

What makes this comic work so well is how intimate the horror feels. Jonah is not some action hero with silver bullets, holy water, and a trench coat full of answers. He is a regular dude trying to figure out whether someone is impersonating him, stalking him, replacing him, or dragging him into a psychological trap so weird that even the group chat would say, “Nah bro, log off and move.” The brilliance is that Dunn makes Jonah’s spiral feel believable. First, it is confusion. Then embarrassment. Then anger. Then obsession. Then the kind of lonely paranoia where every room gets colder and every smile looks suspicious. By the time Jonah starts chasing the “other him,” the reader is already trapped in that same mental loop. Is this a prank? A deepfake? A stalker? A supernatural echo? A breakdown? The book keeps that ambiguity alive like a candle burning in a room with no windows.

Visually, Followed has a handmade, graphite-heavy personality that gives it a raw underground-horror pulse. Dunn’s artwork has this smudged, grayscale unease that fits the story like a hoodie pulled too tight over your face. The faces are slightly too expressive. The smiles sit a little wrong. The eyes hold too much light. That is not a complaint that is the sauce. The art does not chase slick perfection; it chases discomfort. Every panel feels like a memory you are not sure you actually lived. The photorealistic reference approach gives the comic an uncanny realism, but Dunn wisely lets the drawings remain visibly drawn, textured, scratched, and human. That tension between realism and distortion is where the nightmare breathes. You can feel the labor in the linework, especially in the close-ups, where Jonah’s face becomes less like a face and more like evidence.

The pacing is tight, too. Dunn knows when to let a panel breathe and when to choke the page with dread. There are scenes where Jonah is surrounded by people, yet the composition makes him feel completely alone. That is not easy to pull off, but it lands. The bar scenes, the social gatherings, the casual conversations they should feel warm, normal, alive. Instead, they feel like Jonah is standing behind glass watching everyone else exist without effort. That emotional disconnection is the engine of the book. The doppelgänger is scary, sure, but Jonah’s loneliness is what makes the horror stick to your ribs. He is not just afraid someone is pretending to be him. He is afraid that this other version might be better at being him than he is. Oof. That is the demon right there.

And let’s talk about the social media angle, because this is where Followed gets extra spicy. This comic understands that the internet has made identity into something public, editable, and weirdly stealable. Somebody can post your face, tag your name, reshape your narrative, and suddenly you are fighting a version of yourself that exists outside your control. That is modern horror, papo. Not a castle. Not a crypt. A feed. A profile. A comment thread. A photo you did not take. Dunn taps into that anxiety without over-explaining it or turning the comic into a lecture. He lets the premise do the dirty work. The result feels current without being trendy, creepy without being cheap, and psychological without becoming pretentious. That is a clean win.

The lettering and dialogue also serve the vibe well. Jonah’s narration has that nervous, self-justifying rhythm of someone trying to convince himself he is still in control. The repeated focus on recognition the face, the eyes, the smile, the places he has never been becomes almost ritualistic. It is like Jonah is saying these things to anchor himself to reality, but every repetition pulls him further away from it. The dialogue in social settings feels deliberately awkward in that “I am here, but I am not really here” kind of way. People talk around Jonah, at Jonah, near Jonah, but the emotional signal keeps breaking up. Static in the soul. That is the good weird stuff.

Where the book really earns its horror badge is in how it handles escalation. It does not jump from “strange online post” to “evil twin apocalypse” in two pages. It lets Jonah make bad choices that feel like logical choices when you are already panicking. He reports. Nobody responds. He investigates. Nothing helps. He confronts the mystery. The mystery smiles back. The further he goes, the more the story suggests that the doppelgänger may not be chasing Jonah in the traditional sense. It may be baiting him. It may be replacing him. It may be reflecting something Jonah does not want to see. That is deliciously sinister. Like mofongo with a ghost pepper in it flavorful, dangerous, and possibly a threat to your afternoon.

If there is one area where some readers may want more, it is expansion. The concept is so strong that you can easily imagine a longer version digging deeper into Jonah’s relationships, his history, and the broader mechanics of the phenomenon. But honestly, the compactness is also part of the charm. Followed feels like a cursed short film you found on a VHS tape in a box labeled “DO NOT WATCH, GENIUS.” It is focused. It is mean in the right way. It gets in, tightens the screws, and leaves you with that ugly little question crawling behind your eyes: what if the version of you online is not just fake… what if it is waiting?

Patrick Dunn deserves major props for creating a comic that feels personal, unsettling, and sharply executed. Followed is not horror-by-committee. It feels like one creator chasing one nightmare until it catches shape on the page. That kind of singular vision matters, especially in indie comics, where the best work often comes from creators who are willing to get strange, get specific, and get a little uncomfortable. Dunn does all three. He gives us a story that understands the digital age is not just about connection it is also about exposure, distortion, and the terrifying possibility that your identity can leave the house without you.

Followed is a strong, eerie, black-and-white psychological horror comic with a nasty little hook and a visual style that makes every smile feel like a warning. It is for readers who like their horror intimate, paranoid, and quietly venomous. No cheap fireworks. No overcooked exposition. Just a man, his face, a feed full of impossible evidence, and the slow realization that something wearing his life may already be ahead of him.

Followed is indie horror with teeth creepy, clever, personal, and absolutely built for readers who enjoy dread that crawls instead of runs. Patrick Dunn cooked up a social media nightmare that hits way too close to home, and that is exactly why it works. Lock your doors, check your tags, and maybe stop scrolling for five minutes… because apparently your evil twin got better engagement than you. WEPA!

CRUSADERS SCORE:
3.5/5

Creator / Writer / Illustrator: Patrick Dunn
Publisher / Imprint: Graphic Nightmares

Check out the website at:
graphicnightmares.art