In “The First Eight Hours,” the genies reveal the rules of wishing, as well as hint at their master plan. Meanwhile, at the Lampwick, Will Williams reveals a little bit about what makes him tick, and how the gang will survive these first, harrowing days after G-Day. Also, nearly 800,000,000 are dead. Eight Billion Genies #2 is written by Charles Soule, drawn and designed by Ryan Browne, and lettered by Chris Crank.
Mark Turetsky: Well, it’s been eight minutes since we made our wishes. For those readers just joining us, Will wished this comic into existence, while I wished that I could be slightly more impulsive. I don’t know how your eight minutes have been, Will, but mine have been pretty wild! For example: I decided to give myself a little treat, and I ate not one but two pieces of dark chocolate. I know, I’m just going ape here.
Will Nevin: I’m at least feeling good about my wish because this second issue is solid. But I gotta admit, I’ve got some serious wish envy. I mean, I could have been a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees. Or a billionaire. Or I could have made myself a billionaire and bought the New York Yankees. Settling for a comic is … a bit underwhelming.
The Impulsive Wishes
Mark: So much of this issue is given over to metagaming: people who make their wishes immediately are impulsive, and those wishes will be the wishes of impulsive people. It’s a tautology, but it makes a lot of sense. As Will Williams says, “These are the bad times. The chaos times.”
Will: Part of any story about wishes and genies must include the rules of the game, no? I’m glad we got a little of that here, if only to give this world a bit of grounding. What’s the long-term strategy here? Is having the last wish on the planet an advantage? Or is the advantage really holding on to your wish until you can make sense of the unfolding apocalypse?
Mark: Luck has to play into it quite a bit, right? At the start of this issue, about 10% of the world’s population has died within eight minutes. It might make sense to hold onto your wish, but you might get killed in this first wave of wishes. The vignette at the beginning of the issue really outlines the dilemma, where the dad of the family says, “You are children. I love you all, but everything you want is stupid.” (as an aside, I hope that dad doesn’t die before his kids can wish).
Will: You know that didn’t happen for no reason — there’s going to be some dramatic consequence to that particular choice. And speaking of choices and wishes that we’ve seen in this issue and the first one, I think they’re all fairly interesting avenues for storytelling … aside from the love triangle. Mark, I just cannot get into that one.
Mark: I’m not too sure of that. It could just be there to illustrate a point. Like, I don’t think the vignette with the baby being born (and Jacques Zacque from Curse Words) will be revisited, unless it’s to confirm my theory that the birth of the 8 billionth person is what triggers the arrival of the genies.
The Genies: What’s Their Plan?
Mark: This issue also gives us a glimpse at the rules of wishing in this world. If two wishes are in conflict with each other, they cancel out (notably, in the vignette with the president and his chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the genie says “Wish acknowledged” instead of “wish granted.”)
Will: Sir, show the hero of Soule’s Letter 44 some respect: That’s President Blades there. (Pronounced BLAH-days, by the way, because I will never forget that embarrassing moment that one time I interviewed Soule.)
And what about that shout of frustration from the chairman when that wish doesn’t work out. Hilarious. Do you think this sets up the genies as some flavor of chaotic good? Lawful neutral? I’m not so good on my DnD alignments, but these little buggers seem difficult to peg.
Mark: They cause chaos, but that’s merely the consequence of strictly following a set of rules (laws, if you will). They also seem unconcerned with concepts of good or evil, and seem more concerned with the aesthetics of wishes. So I’m going to peg them as lawful neutral. Maybe true neutral, but I think there’s something to the lawful angle, since they’re very worried about rules and fairness.
We also get a hint about “where we go when we aren’t here.” Is this a hint at some greater reality that the genies inhabit? Is it just a way of saying they can just disappear? I’m leaning toward hinting at something great, rather than a handwave, because that’s just a more interesting choice.
Will: The way they’re stylized certainly suggests some cosmic realm, and I also wonder how closely related they are to Rick and Morty’s Meeseeks as a concept — do they cease to be after they grant their wish? And if so, is one of those “wish acknowledged” situations unfulfilling for both sides?
Mark: And what’s the nature of their consciousness? They seem omniscient, since they know what’s going on with other genies who aren’t there. They also switch between having conversations with each other and finishing each other’s thoughts. Are they a hive-mind? They’re part Greek chorus, part little stinker.
Ed and Wang’s Wishes
Mark: Finally we get two of our main cast using their wishes. The first is Ed, wishing for the return of his late wife, June. So far, it’s the only time that we see the genies applauding someone’s wish. As they put it, “Wishing is an art. It brings us joy to see it practiced well.”
Will: It’s a simple, artful wish, sure, but is it going to play out that way? I don’t trust anything in this book, and it feels like we’re getting set up for something bad with this one. After all, Mark, sometimes, dead is better.
Mark: She’s going to be stuck in this bar for the foreseeable future, and she has a distinct disadvantage to everyone else: She doesn’t get a wish. Still, being alive is a fair trade-off, right? But she’s alive in an absurd world where just about anything can happen.
The second main cast wish that we get is Wang’s, which manifests as a powered exosuit and all kinds of new skills that he didn’t have before. Regardless of the dangers he’s in, he’s dead set on getting to the Lamplight Tavern. Why that is is anybody’s guess.
Will: Not to fall back on our other writing gig, but do you ’member the second season Next Generation episode “Elementary, Dear Data” in which the Enterprise computer created a holodeck Professor Moriarty clever enough to defeat Data, which naturally entailed making it smart enough to gain sentience? It was the reverse of the cheat code we have here — being tough/smart/whatever enough to survive the genie apocalypse seems like the functional equivalent of unlimited wishes. Either he’s positioned for long-term survival, or he’s going to be unable to function in the *next* genie apocalypse period (eight days or eight weeks or whatever’s a long enough timeline for things to once again change).
As you can see from my thoughts, I really don’t trust this book. And I don’t mean that in a bad way — more of an “all of this seems like a Faustian pact” way.
Mark: Look at all those pouches he has! They’ve got to contain really useful stuff! And I agree: the way it’s phrased, “to become whatever I need to be to survive this new world, and to be able to protect anyone I am with.” Is it just this current world, the one that resembles ice cream? When things eventually settle down (Will they?), will he be the proverbial man out of time, capable of violence and vengeance, but incapable of, dare I say it, love?
The final page cliffhanger is that three new refugees have made their way to the Lampwick: Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Zbornak (a fictional character!) and Jim Morrison. Between June’s return from the dead and these three, do you think we might start to see the number of humans on Earth start to tick up?
Will: It’s easier to destroy than it is to create, Mark, but I guess adding genies to that changes the math a bit. We’ll have more fictional characters, more people living longer (or infinite!) lives, more babies being born. That all seems like it would cause the number to tick up, but we also have a lot of destruction and upheaval. When that settles down is known only to Soule and Browne.
Mark: I was thinking like in early Battlestar Galactica, where the numbers kept going down due to Cylon attacks, but then ticked up by one when a baby was born. And are these three characters new people who were wished for, or are they transformed wishers?
Will: You know, that’s a good question — because if you can be Ernest Hemingway, why not be Ernest Hemingway? But you can also see how that could be the product of a wish gone bad. “I’d like to have a beer with Hemingway” could quickly become “Thanks for the beer, but you’re a dweeb, and I’m out of here.”
Those little stinker genies.
8 Billion Things We Couldn’t Fit Anywhere Else
- Mark’s favorite visual gag: a banana kaiju and a corn kaiju battling it out in Argentina. According to this Wikipedia article, maize production in Argentina in 2018 was 43.5 million tons, while bananas were a paltry 174 thousand tons. My money’s on the corn giant.
- Will’s favorite visual gag: If you’re going to have a carasaurus, it might as well have your name on it.
- A little mention of Curse Words, a little Letter 44 reference — why not a little nod to 27, Soule’s series with Renzo Podesta about the tragic club of musicians (including Jim Morrison) who died before their 28th birthday?
Mark Turetsky
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
