Image Comics brings you a wish-granting genie that can traverse around space and time that can grant the user one wish in Eight Billion Genies the graphic novel. Well, I’m reviewing a comic that is different from Aladdin and this comic is about a magical deity who can travel through time as a wish-granting genie. But the fun thing about this comic is that there are a lot of genies with different appearances and personalities that cover up the whole entire population of this planet. And from what I understand is that this comic has a magical number, and that is number eight, because we had eight issues of the comic, eight billion genies for every single person to grant a wish, eight hours of sleep, eight hours of work and eight hours of doing our own work, drawing comics and such. It’s kind of a random thing to have to count the number eight whenever you grant a wish and you have to wait 8 seconds to minutes and hours. The comic is created by both Charles Soule and Ryan Browne. Charles is an American comic writer who is best known for writing Daredevil, She-Hulk, Wolverine, and some various Star Wars books and comic series from Del Rey and Marvel. Before that, he worked in New York City for the firm Ropes and Gray, where he practices immigration, transactional and corporate law, right before he started his own practice in 2004. And Ryan is a Harvey Award “losing” or winning comicbookman living in Chicago (I don’t know what came up with his mind to put this bio), who has written and drawn very strange things by himself. However as far as I read his bio, he actually makes some good stuff, he created “God Hates Astronauts”, and “Blast Furnance.” And he has drawn and co-created some other comics with Charles like this comic.
The front cover of this comic is just too cute to look at. There you see an alien-like creature which people call a genie, however, he’s more of an adorable spirit from outer space. And looking at it makes this comic really adorable. The only difference about the art is that Ryan started to draw such a cute genie, while the rest of the comic and the background show that he has drawn some detailed characters who looked like one of the characters from Miles Morales Spiderman from PS5. So the cover art of this comic is all sketched with some red and blue pencils to define the concept art between the genie and the people. Do you know what this genie reminds me of, the Meeseeks from Rick and Morty. Everyone seemed excited to see that creature, except one man with glasses next to the genie seemed to be disappointed or something. I don’t what’s his problem. The back of the comic shows the genies in different forms of clothing and personality and a quote by Patton Oswalt which is written “Eight Billion Genies is fucking incredible.” Well, I can almost relate to one of the comics that I read and liked, comics like one of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip’s books, Berserk, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, a comic about a Jewish man fighting against the Nazis, Ask For Mercy, Space Boy, Hooky, etc. But on how he reacted after reading Eight Billion Genies he went fucking apeshit in excitement after reading this.
The story starts at a bar in Michigan where a bartender talking to a kid about wishing him a happy birthday because the boy’s father told the bartender that today is his birthday, but that guy is actually a piece of shit because he slept for no reason. But that didn’t stop there, there are some people who are in a band who are preparing to perform tonight, then there are some Chinese people trying to get the kid translated from Mandarin, but then suddenly, the bartender came up and the Chinese asked a question that if this called the Lamplight Tavern, and the tavern is right here all along. And right after all that jazz about this so-called social life, a cartoonish genie just came out of nowhere to each person one by one. But what’s really so weird is that these genies are almost identical to the person who is granting a wish, it’s like looking at a mirror, and the artist draws them based on their appearances and personalities. Not only that, but each person gets a genie to grant a wish and the whole population is actually the same number of eight billion humans with eight billion genies. And for some reason, there’s one character that I find in such an agreement who said “What the actual fuck?” Because I can’t even believe that this comic would be this more bizarre as it seems. Who would have thought of having a cartoonish genie on your side??
And if seeing a genie on your side is not enough for you, then everything that you see outside has been granting every wish from a single person this whole world is so messed up right now, people have been granting wishes out of their wildest imaginations. I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN BUT THIS IS ALMOST LIKE HOW YOUR CHILDHOOD COMES TO LIFE. And whenever I went to the next chapter, the whole population has started reducing rapidly the more human lives has lost, the more wishes that they granted and the genies have disappeared. However one of the people granted one of the sincerest wishes ever could, like having the birthday boy’s mom come back to life, and the Chinese man wished for power, power to protect everyone in this mad world that these people created, and then he transformed into a weird looking Kamen Rider, and then when he came back he learned that the wishes that the people have granted are really dumb. These people are all fools, they started wishing for something stupid just to become rich, powerful, weird, and some random stuff that they wanted to do, AND IT’S PRETTY PATHETIC. YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT’S COMING TO YOU WHEN YOU GRANT A WISH. But the only shocking thing in the series is that the bartender claims that he’s a genie from another dimension, the last one. I’m sorry, this comic is way over my head because I never read something that is so very exciting, to begin with, but at this point, I don’t even care anymore, I gave up on going through so much theory of this comic, so I’m going to end this review.
The story is very interesting to know the fact that there are eight billion genies for one single person over the whole population of this planet. I guess this comic is too random, that the creators decided to give them some wish-granting creatures just to do whatever they want to wish for. And whenever time passes on, they still have their genies while the humans grow up. This is really the most intriguing comic that I ever read about genies with their type of personalities, and there’s no comparison over this because whenever I see the designs of the genies, one of them has the user’s personality, the way they speak and everything, but imagine if he draws the genie version of me in a cute way, it probably for the best because I still look like a kid. OH AND YEAH LET’S TALK ABOUT RYAN’S ART STYLE.
The first thing I noticed when I picked up this book is that he draws his cute genies while the whole background is a lot of humans drawn realistically, as an Image/Marvel Comic material. But there are a lot of different genie designs, like the one on the front cover with the hair and the skull shirt, the one with glasses, and the bearded genie. However, my favorite genie is the birthday boy, because his genie is super cute. I’ve seen some cute designs a lot, this isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last that I keep seeing some cute stuff. I have one of my readers of the webcomic I created who just gave me feedback about my art that my characters are cute and all; but that’s beside the point, the designs of the genies are so fucking cute, that the artist started selling plushies not too long ago, but man if I ever see this adorable plushie, I will buy it for myself.
And not only that, whenever I see the art of the outside world, people have been wishing some superheroes and monsters and stuff. But what I see is one of the weirdest character designs that I ever witnessed which is coming out of your children’s imaginations. And there’s this AquaTeen Hunger Force character who cameos at that scene when someone said “Onward to battle! Onward to victory!” It’s really weird but I find this much more weirder than I ever thought it would be, and I really love this.
As for that, I’ve come to the agreement with Patton Oswalt that this comic is incredible. It’s really fun to read, it’s like Hooky in a different package, it’s really a wild adventure to experience and I really love it.
Newsdesk