By Bruno Savill De Jong — Among other things, the COVID-19 Pandemic has exposed the enormous and widening gulf in economic inequality across the globe. Early rhetoric about “all being in the same boat” quickly dissipated once people realized their lifeboats were barely held together as is, and they still had to venture down the rapids of frontline work while others could wait out on the shore. Although conceived and created before the advent of the Coronavirus, Darryl Cunningham’s new graphic novel, Billionaires: The Lives of the Rich and Powerful, chronicles the astronomical wealth of three contemporary billionaires: Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers and Jeff Bezos. Like it or not, the titanic industries created by these men have shaped the modern world. Cunningham collects vast data and research into their lives and businesses, detailing how through bending their companies to collect additional revenue, they have also thrown society out of shape.

Cunningham has clearly compiled huge swaths of research for these biographies. The dense information occasionally threatens to become overwhelming, but Billionaires cartooning provides enough space to pace out the information, condensing and directing the historical and corporate details. This is still a text-first comic, but Cunningham’s flatten art-style helps put the point across. Billionaires even slips in some dark humor: in one panel The Times new editor Harold Evans is praising the independence Murdoch has promised the newspaper, and in the next panel Harold Evans is resigning because of the “disgusting and demoralizing vindictive atmosphere” Murdoch installed.

Billionaires contains all the hair-pulling frustration you expect from stories of the super-rich; how Murdoch teamed up with Margaret Thatcher to demolish the printer unions, how the Koch Brother fiercely (and successfully) lobbied against climate change regulations. But Billionaires is restrained enough to go into their backgrounds and motivations, detailing small incidents alongside the large ones. Murdoch was originally part of the Labour Party, for instance, before gradually embracing totalitarian oversight of his media empire and conceding to far-right viewership.

Perhaps inevitably, Billionaires does become a book more about the businesses than the people. Cunningham is uninterested in a gossipy personal book (although he does detail the relevant fraternal rivalry of the Kochs), and instead focuses on corporate policies and their controversies. But this then becomes an interesting question of how responsible CEOs are for their corporate culture. On his own, Jeff Bezos embodies the rags-to-riches American Dream, finding enormous success through his grit and determination. The issue is that it’s not about Bezos alone, that even in the early days of Amazon he expected the same workaholic dedication to keep it afloat, even when Amazon is now extremely successful.

Is Jeff Bezos personally responsible for Amazon’s notoriously brutal high-standards, where Warehouse workers are scared to even take bathroom breaks? The better question is, does it matter? Billionaires shows that regardless of libertarian notions of “independence,” regulations and standards are crucial for a fairer society. That it doesn’t matter how these men made their fortune, through shady dealings or honestly good foresight, as billionaires as an inherent concept which corrupts infrastructures from the top downwards. Cunningham offers clear-eyed explanations of how these fortunes were acquired, but with a polemic lens of how they were hoarded. Money might make the world go round, but Billionaires provides a peek beneath the surface, and how if we aren’t careful, it might spin out of control.

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Billionaires by Darryl Cunningham

Billionaires: The Lives of the Rich and Powerful
Creator: Darryl Cunningham
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Price: $24.95
In Billionaires, Darryl Cunningham offers an illuminating analysis of the origins and ideological evolutions of four key players in the American private sector—Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and oil and gas tycoons Charles and David Koch. What emerges is a vital critique of American capitalism and the power these individuals have to assert a corrupting influence on policy-making, political campaigns, and society writ large. 
Cunningham focuses on a central question: Can the world afford to have a tiny global elite squander resources and hold unprecedented political influence over the rest of us? The answer is detailed through hearty research, common sense reasoning, and astute comedic timing. Billionaires reveals how the fetishized free market operates in direct opposition with the health of our planet and needs of the most vulnerable—how Murdoch’s media mergers facilitated his war-mongering, how Amazon’s litigiousness and predatory acquisitions made them “The Everything Store,” and how the Kochs’ father’s refineries literally fueled Nazi Germany. 
In criticizing the uncontrolled reach of power by Rupert Murdoch (in fueling the far right), the Koch Brothers (in advocating for climate change denial), and Jeff Bezos (in creating unsafe working conditions), Cunningham speaks truth to power. Billionaires ends by suggesting alternatives for a safer and more just society.
Release Date: May 2021
Buy It Here: Billionaires by Darryl Cunningham

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Bruno Savill De Jong is a recent undergraduate of English and freelance writer on films and comics, living in London. His infrequent comics-blog is Panels are Windows and semi-frequent Twitter is BrunoSavillDeJo.