Everybody in the world gets a genie. Each genie grants one wish. Here’s what happens in the first eight seconds. Then the first eight minutes. Eight Billion Genies #1 is written by Charles Soule, drawn by Ryan Browne and lettered by Chris Crank for Image Comics.
Mark Turetsky: Welcome, dear reader, to our review of 8 Billion Genies #1! Will, what are you doing here? This isn’t a Star Trek!
Will Nevin: Mark, I told you I wasn’t doing Discovery. And if I’m gonna watch animated Trek, it had better have a cat person in it. Wait, what am I doing here? This some kind of web sight [sic] that does other things aside from niche streaming television shows?
Mark: Well, as long as you’re here, have you read the first issue of Eight Billion Genies? Some series have no genies. Some might have one or two. But what if I asked you, “What if genies? But also, 8 billion of genies?” That’s what this series seeks to answer.
Will: I’d only be interested in that book if it had just, you know, the most electric colors imaginable. And if it was by the same creative team that brought us Curse Words.
Mark [revealing himself to be a genie who looks like Mark]: Your wish is granted! I was a genie all along. And now, the real Mark will return.
Will: Was that my one wish?
Shit.
Status Quo
Mark: So, to start, this book covers a lot of ground in its first 10 pages. We get introduced to our cast of characters (or, at least, I assume these are the folks we’ll be following). There’s Robbie, a boy coming to a dive bar, the Lampwick, to retrieve his father, Ed. There’s Wang and Leifeng, a Chinese couple who are definitely in the wrong place. Daisy, Alex and Brian, the live music act, and a bartender who’s full of secrets.
Will: And this all goes down in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, which is a real place that’s (surprise) on a lake north of Detroit. Seems like that’s a stand-in for Anytown, USA, but maybe it becomes important later — who knows? None of these characters are super deep (yet, anyway), but I wouldn’t want any more investment than we got, because you want to get to the cool, weird shit as quickly as possible in something like this. Would I want to read 28 pages of setup to end with the “surprise, everyone has a genie” bit on the last page? That sounds terrible.
Mark: Yeah, it probably wouldn’t be great. It’s also strange, in this early part of the book, to see a rather restrained Ryan Browne. I wouldn’t say he’s drawing photorealism, as his work always has some degree of cartoonishness to it, but it’s tamped down to a certain degree. Add to that Browne’s colors are really subdued here. It does so much to capture the feel of a shitty bar. It’s dark. It’s depressing. It’s certainly not what I expect coming into a Ryan Browne comic.
Will: That’s a definite choice, right? Because not only does that nail the mood of a dive bar with “character” that definitely doesn’t “reek of piss and spilled beer,” but it also serves as a contrast with what comes … after.
Mark: Just the stark difference when we arrive in a delivery room in France. I’m wondering if we’re seeing the birth of the 8 billionth (concurrent) human on Earth. That’s why it’s such a round number, right?
Will: That would explain the random jump to France. And, hey, I give props to the creative team for writing this into the book since we’re projected to hit 8 billion people either later this year or early in 2023.
The First 8 Seconds
Will: OK, Mark: You got one wish. And let’s not make it sad or creepy. (Not that you would do the last one.)
Mark: I dunno … I’m not a terribly impulsive person. I’d probably sit on the wish for a while. I’d spend the time contemplating what the optimum wish would be, weighing the pros and cons, not just for myself, but for the sake of my family. I wish I were just a bit more impulsive.
NO, WAIT! THAT WASN’T THE WISH! ARRRGH!
Will: You have to snap your fingers with a flash of light, right? Isn’t that how this happens? But, yes, you’d maybe be strategic, like our bartender, Mr. Will Williams, with his zone of protection around his crummy bar. I don’t know how far the book is going to get bogged down in this, but if he could wish for a zone of no wishes, couldn’t someone else wish that no one got any wishes?
Mark: I think as the series goes on, and we see the first 8 hours, 8 days, 8 years, etc., we’ll see more and more strategic use of the wishes. In the first eight seconds, the world gets turned into a cube, some pretty nasty explosions happen, a million people are dead and 2 million genies are gone. These are the impulsive wishes. The wishes of people, like me now, who are just a bit more impulsive. I’m curious: Have you read any of Charles Soule’s novels?
Will: I have not, no, but I did get super into Letter 44 if that counts for anything. I assume he takes up some fantasy stuff?
Mark: His two non-Star Wars novels, The Oracle Year and Anyone, are more or less set in the real world, with one crucial difference. In Oracle Year, it’s “what if someone came up with 108 absolutely accurate predictions, from the outlandish to the utterly mundane, that will happen over the course of one year?” It’s a tiny, tiny thing, but it utterly changes the world.
Anyone is a bit more sci-fi, but it’s basically, “what if, tomorrow, someone invented a mind swapping device?” Predictable, that one changes the world, but they’re both founded in a realistic world. It’s speculative fiction in the purest sense. I get the feeling with this that it started the same way: “What if, tomorrow, everyone got a wish all at once?” Of course, with a premise like that, you’d really want a Ryan Browne to bring the thing to life, wouldn’t you?
Will: Well, I mean, that’s literally what I wished for up there in the intro, so it must be a thing I’ve really wanted. But for realsies, he does a great job here. I don’t know how I would have gone about drawing and coloring a mess of genies, but the work is great — each genie has their own little sense of visual character, and the cosmic coloring immediately gets to the point that these things are not of this earth. Also, it just looks cool.
Mark: They’re visually very similar to 3-D Cowboy, the narrator of Browne’s series God Hates Astronauts. I also love how they’re colored to look like portals into deep space. The stars, the milky way. I’d be curious to see if that were purely a digital color effect or if they’re rendered that way in Browne’s inks. They also read immediately as, to use the technical term, cheeky little stinkers.
Will: Imp-ish, as it were. Maybe they’re aliens trying to wipe us out. A million people dying almost instantly certainly speaks to that possibility.
Or maybe it’s the universe self-correcting.
The First 8 Minutes
Mark: I’m interested to see how this series will end up balancing the personal (the torrid love triangle of the band, let’s say) vs. the global (gestures at the final page of the issue). Just how wild will things get, while we hide out at the oasis of relative normalcy of the Lampwick? This issue, while entertaining on its own, brims with the promise of just how out there things will get over months, years and who knows how long.
Will: It’s clear (to me at least) that this is an apocalyptic story — a zombie book on acid, the end of the world painted with a technicolor rainbow. How the series explores the usual tropes (a safe house, warding off outsiders, resolving conflicts within the group of survivors, etc.) within this bonkers backdrop is the hook moving forward. In many ways, this feels — at first blush — like a sunnier version of The Nice House on the Lake.
Mark: Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought to connect those two stories, but I think you’re right. Also, this book has a character modeled on Reginald VelJohnson, so it’s definitely got a leg up on Nice House.
Will: Nice House got too deep into the interpersonal drama after the first issue, which was as well-received as any book that I can remember. This, though, keeps it simple — the characters are rough sketches, and there aren’t so many that you can’t keep ’em straight.
Mark: To be fair, Nice House is a psychological horror comic. This is much more brimming with joie de vivre.
Will: Alas, the comparison can only go so far. But what a pickle the band is in, amirite?
Mark: From their promotion of this comic, Soule and Browne have stated that each issue will be dealing with longer and longer time frames, so I’m curious to see if any of our characters are still around in 80 or 800 years.
I need to make a confession, though: This is not the first version of this comic that I’ve read. I managed to get the ashcan edition of this first issue months ago, and it provides a few extra pages at the end that might explain part of why the genies have started appearing. I don’t want to spoil what’s in those pages, but I’m very curious to see where those pages end up in the finished series, or if they show up at all.
Will: I’ll pull another Tynion book on you: Eugenic.That was another series that explored the future of the world it created. Eight Billion Genies after 800 years? I’d love to see it, Mark. Also, you’re a fucking tease.
Mark: I’d show you the pages, but pirating comics is wrong, Will.
Will: You’re right. I wish that all comics pirates would wake up tomorrow with their nipples in a knot.
Mark: You already used your wish. And if I were slightly more impulsive I might send you those pages.
8 Billion Things We Couldn’t Fit Anywhere Else
- St. Clair Shores is home to, among other people, Dave Coulier.
- The lady in Vancouver teleporting to Montreal is 100% correct. Montreal is much better.
- Is that God Hates Astronauts’ Star Fighter on the roof of the Lampwick, having used his one wish to restore his head to normalcy? Or is it a fan of the comic who, in my opinion, wasted his wish?
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.
