By Zack Quaintance — This week, the trade collection for Mark Russell and Steve Pugh’s fantastic late capitalism survivalist satire, Billionaire Island, hits bookstores. To mark the collected edition — which contains all six issues — writer Brian Michael Bendis has penned an introduction for the book. It is our honor to run that introduction in its entirety, along with a preview of the trade collection, here today!

You can read Bendis’ intro below…enjoy!

Billionaire Island Introduction

By Brian Michael Bendis

Not long ago on my, ugh, twitter feed, I saw a lot of people discussing the idea that one of our most famous billionaires, a relatively new billionaire, should-would-could step in and fix some of the world’s biggest and obvious problems. I’m not going to mention which billionaire as it is someone I may be working for at the moment. The back and forth was rather optimistic towards the idea of a Savior billionaire until others chimed in. One post, in particular, stayed with me: Why would he? Why would this billionaire help any of us? If I was a billionaire I wouldn’t help anybody. That’s the whole point of being a billionaire.

“If I was a billionaire I wouldn’t help anybody.”

It got me thinking and, yeah, in the history of the universe, since the terrible invention of billionaires, not one of them has ever actually done right by the rest of us.

No one has ever taken their massive accumulated power and wealth and turned it around and fixed the world’s obvious ills.

Not once. Never. It’s never happened.

They’ve talked about it. It doesn’t last long enough to actually, you know, work. It usually ends up with one of the billionaires trying to run for office or putting their name on something. The end.

Billionaires are SUCH a dumb idea. They should not be. They do not make for a better world and often actively get in the way of a better world. It's true. Google it. (And by doing so, about five billionaires get .00312 cents richer.)

Billionaires! What DO they do? ALL they do is make the world better for Billionaires while at the same time trying really hard not to EVER create ANY more Billionaires.

Listen, no lie, as I write this the world is teetering on the brink of madness and it’s mostly billionaires that put us here. So, I’m feeling extra grumpy about the whole thing.

Or, I should say I was. Then I read and fell in LOVE with Billionaire Island.

I’m so mad about the world I couldn’t find the funny again until Mark Russell and Steve Pugh showed it to me. In THIS world where irony has been all but ruined? That is GREAT satire.

Oh, I am a huge fan of Mark Russell. I am a BIG fan of Steve Pugh. I’m also a big fan of the specific collaboration between Mark and Steve. I think this is just another brick in what will be a VERY long and varied collaboration. I love how high they reach and how often they get there.

The second I walked in the DC comics and had a writing gig to give someone I called Mark Russell.

I haven’t discussed this with Mark Russell but I bet the movie Network was a huge influence on this material. I thought about it a lot when reading. All of us highfalutin’ writers of a certain age look up to Paddy Chayefsky for the ultimate inspiration. The highest inspiration. Paddy Chayefsky is synonymous with excellent writing that only a few people have been able to achieve (Charlie Kaufman, the Coen brothers...), some unique distillation of real emotion in the broadest of satire pulled together in a way that only they could do.

In the movie Network — please stop what you’re doing and go watch it, we’ll wait — Paddy Chayefsky was able to conjure a world for the 1970s audience of wildly over-the-top media satire. Today? It's a mirror. Every single thing in the movie has come true! Every single thing. Every maddening, horrible, over the top, unthinkable moment of that movie is actually happening in real life right now.

As I said, many of us in the storytelling racket look to that movie as the ultimate achievement. To create a piece of work that changes and evolves its meaning as time goes on. So much art is of a moment (and that is a special thing). But to transcend the moment in any way, shape, or form is out of the artist’s hands and can be truly beautiful.

I think that’s what Mark and Steve and everyone else associated have accomplished here. I think this is masterful satire and it's ALL GOING TO COME TRUE!! Probably by the end of this sentence.

Congratulations to the entire team on accomplishing the highest artistic achievement especially in the middle of our craziest time.

Wait! Hold on... Billionaire Island, Snagglepuss, Flintstones, Wonder Twins... yeah.

Okay, I’ll say it. Mark Russell IS comics’ Paddy Chayefsky.

(Shit, I hope he likes Paddy Chayefsky.)

-Bendis!
What's left of Portland, Oregon
September 2020

Billionaire Island GN

Billionaire Island Graphic Novel
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Steve Pugh
Colorist: Chris Chuckry
Letterer: Rob Steen
Publisher: Ahoy Comics
A savage satire reuniting the critically acclaimed team behind DC's The Flintstones―writer Mark Russell (SECOND COMING) and artist Steve Pugh (Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass)―in a new graphic novel. Welcome to Billionaire Island, where anything goes...if you can afford it. But the island's ultra-rich inhabitants are about to learn that their ill-gotten gains come at a VERY high price.

Billionaire Island is available from online booksellers now, and it is also available for purchase digitally.