Publisher: Ahoy Comics
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Steve Pugh
Status: Complete
Welcome To Freedom Unlimited!
Billionaire Island is a comic which gives away its primary premise from its title as the comic explores how the wealthiest individuals in the world decided to combat growing global problems by building a luxury floating island exclusively for members of the three comma club. The island is built on international waters leaving it free from any laws that could otherwise constrain the eccentric and questionable activities of its inhabitants. The island, named Freedom Unlimited, boasts metal detection devices that scan all visitors to confirm a satisfactory networth, making use of various security drones to discard those that otherwise miss the billionaire mark.
The selfish actions of the few who have the resources to hole up on the island as the world slowly rots both confuses and angers those that feel like the vast resources of the world’s wealthiest would be best served in finding solutions to said growing problems. One such individual lost his family in Angola thanks to an agricultural corporation named AgroCorp who unethically decided to experiment with an impotency drug that was hidden in the food they provided as relief to developing countries. Meant to serve as a solution to uncontrollable population growth, The drug’s side effects resulted in horrific deaths for those who consumed the products, including the family of one of the main characters, Trent.
Trent decided to hunt down the owners of the corporation to enact his revenge, Punisher style, his primary target being one of the main men to think up Freedom Unlimited. But he would not be the only interested party in learning more about the founders of the island. A young journalist named Shelly Bly decided to pose the tough questions to the CEO of Agrocorp,Rick Canto, an endeavor that would lead to her imprisonment in a giant hamster cage with four other individuals that had crossed him in one way or another. The other four inhabitants differed from Shelly in their acceptance of their comfortable circumstances where they received gourmet meals and even cash payments at various intervals, and apt metaphor for the hamster wheels that we all occupy in life. While Trent looks for a way on the island to find the man responsible for his wife and son’s death, Shelly looks for a way out of the hamster cage and off the island to report her troubling findings to the world.
Both protagonists of this tail find their roles reversed as time goes along. Trent is eventually captured and thrown into the same hamster cage soon after Shelly manages to stage an escape and find the actual creator of the island. An island that he built despite a conscious that told him that what he was doing was wrong. His time on the island would mainly be spent in lonely contemplation in a cave with nothing but a mannequin to keep him company. The arrival of Shelly presented him with his opportunity for atonement by using his existent billionaire status to get her in the facility and hopefully off the island.
From the same writer of action comedy, Second Coming, Billionaire Island is a comic that acts as a good social commentary on the state of our current world, or perhaps the coming attractions that are nonetheless bleak even without the idea of a floating island made exclusively for the rich. It’s a comic that makes one laugh both at its absurdities as well as its uncomfortable accuracies. At only six issues, the comic manages to be both poignant and to the point, and yet it seems like it had far more room to gallop than just the few issues that had great potential to take its concept further. Because of this, the comic felt rushed and its resolutions felt anti-climatic, despite the strength of its message. There seems to be possibility of continuation of the the story, but given its current count I felt more could’ve been shown of the island over time and the overall untenability of a society made up of only the wealthy.
Billionaire Island is a fun and exciting ride that gives readers a lot to think about when it comes to concepts such as wealth and worth, value and values. The characters mesh together in a well written story that is unique and intelligently amusing in its content. While the story felt confined within its short run like the hamster cage that some of its inhabitants occupied, it still managed to punctuate its message with dramatic action, drama and humour. A good and quick read for those not looking for major investment in time, happy reading :).
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