Billionaire Island #1
- WRITER
- Mark Russell
- Artist
- Steve Pugh
- Letterer
- Rob Steen
- Cover Artist
- Steve Pugh
- Price
- 3.99
- Release Date
- 2020-03-04
- Colorist
- Chris Chuckry
Billionaire Island #1 is a nasty piece of art that bares its teeth at the 1 percent with a level of bloodlust not seen nearly enough in the graphic medium. While its overall themes are universal for the vast majority of the world, it’s a bit too ham-fisted and blunt to be truly effective as a piece of transgressional satire. Too many punches are pulled, and the comedy isn’t sharp enough to illicit farcical appreciation. And yet, Billionaire Island #1 is too well-crafted in terms of pacing, visual composition, and structure to be ignored or considered a bad comic; it's actually quite good, all things considered.
The best comparison we can think of is that Billionaire Island #1 feels like a shaky pilot episode with a lot of potential. The concept of billionaires utilizing a private media network to promote things only they could possibly afford is something that is not so far-fetched that is needs to be set more than a few years in the future to seem outlandish. Of course, the floating island designed as a getaway for the ultra-rich to indulge in their more hedonistic tendencies is the one wild wrinkle that might cause some readers to laugh at its absurdity. After all, those sorts of islands stay in one place in real life.
Some of the ideas in Billionaire Island #1 would be funnier if they weren’t so close to the real life nightmares and conspiracies surrounding Oligarchical establishments around the world. One of our main characters is a reporter named Shelly Bly who winds up being held captive the creator of the titular resort, tech billionaire (and all around a-hole), Rick Canto. Instead of putting Shelly in shackles, she winds up in a facility fit for rodents. Because life is a rat race, don’t ya know? This sort of gag almost doesn’t work because it’s so on-the-nose, but what writer Mark Russell (Second Coming) and artist Steve Pugh (Animal Man) do is double-down on it. The visual gags make the ham-fisted concept worthwhile. Moments like this reach great comedic beats that feel like they were gags ripped from top shelf seasons of The Simpsons. We just wish these moments were a bit more frequent.
This debut issue does a great job at exploring the idea of the complacency of benign evil. There is an interrogation scene during which a billionaire has a back and forth between someone regarding the legitimacy of their altruism. Things quickly devolve when we, the readers, realize the man with the money and power is making choices for people who don’t get a say in the matter, which might when explored on a humanitarian level is pure evil. These poignant moments save Billionaire Island #1 from being another preaching to the choir comic about awful wealthy people using their influence to sell the masses a lie.
Pugh’s artwork is quite good. The way he draws Rick Canto with the most punchable face in comic books is perfection. He, along with colorist Chris Chuckry, are wise to switch the visual tone from gorgeous and vibrant when we get luxurious scenes on sandy beaches with the rich toasting to their fortune to dour and rough when things get back to reality. The differences are minor, but the fact they even exist speak volumes to the theme of the comic.
Overall, Billionaire Island #1 is by no means a bad comic. And maybe if a little more attention was paid to the actually jokes, we’d have a biting satire that didn’t feel too on-the-nose or blunt. Or, at the very least, the obvious jokes could be subverted for comedic effect. Of course, comedy is subjective, so maybe this writer is just a dumb-dumb (trust us, it’s a very real possibility). Ultimately, this is another win of AHOY Comics, which is a publisher that is constantly doing interesting stuff. They take risks and wild swings, but when they hit, they hit hard. Billionaire Island doesn’t quite reach the satirical brilliance of Russell’s previous series from AHOY, Second Coming, but we’ll stick around to see how things play out.