Comic Review

EP.1 – Playing With Mutant Money – A Review of Billionaires in Comics PT.1

Posted by mindhead006 on

The guys (Kareem, Ken, and Pat) review the state of billionaires in comics. Tangents include Charles Xavier’s insatiable lust for money, mutant apartheid, mutant syphilis’s, and more.

Show Notes: A Billion Is…How Much Again?

Welcome back to Tangential Giants, where Kareem, Ken, and Pat dive into the absurd world of comic book billionaires and the very real history of wealth. This week’s episode asks a deceptively simple question: how much is a billion, really? Spoiler: it’s more money than most of us can even conceptualize.

Episode Highlights

  • Charles Xavier’s finances: How does Professor X keep the lights on at the X-Mansion while rebuilding it every time Magneto drops by? Offshore accounts, psychic stock market manipulation, and mutant real estate empires are all on the table.
  • Mutant apartheid & inequality: The guys explore whether comic book billionaires solve systemic problems or just build taller adamantium towers.
  • Mutant syphilis?! Yes, even superhumans face awkward medical bills. The crew discusses the implications of mutant diseases and how even wealth can’t buy immunity.
  • Tangents galore: From secret mutant Illuminati meetings to Batman vs. Iron Man in an arm-wrestling contest, this episode veers into hilarious chaos.

Real-World Context

To ground the comic absurdity, the episode also explores the history of billionaires:

  • John D. Rockefeller became the world’s first confirmed U.S. dollar billionaire in 1916, thanks to Standard Oil’s near-monopoly.
  • Oxfam’s 2017 report revealed that just 42 individuals held as much wealth as the poorest 3.7 billion people combined.
  • Female billionaires are on the rise: Between 2013 and 2019, their numbers grew by 46%, outpacing male billionaires.
  • Japan’s bubble economy in the 1980s produced billionaires like Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, once the richest man alive with a $20 billion fortune built on real estate.

Perspective on Scale

  • Spending $10,000 a day would take 274 years to burn through a billion.
  • In 2019 alone, 19 new billionaires joined the ranks, some through inheritance or divorce.

References & Links

Summary: This episode blends comic absurdity with real-world billionaire history, showing how wealth in both fiction and reality shapes power, inequality, and sometimes hilariously awkward problems.

EP.123 – Post Decpte-Con Catch Up – A Review of Comic-Con News 2026 – Tangential Giants Podcast

Kareem finally reconnects with Ken and Pat after missing their Comic‑Con panel, and the guys waste no time recapping how their talk on the downfall of billionaires in comics somehow turned into a crowd‑pleaser. Pat insists they were profound. Ken insists they were unhinged. Both are probably right.From there, the conversation swerves into the tall grass. The trio tries to figure out why Transformers actually transform, whether “Decepticons” is a name that should have been retired decades ago, and how to stitch G.I. Joe, Transformers, and the Fast and the Furious into one cinematic universe without breaking the laws of physics or taste.It is exactly the kind of episode where a simple Comic‑Con debrief becomes a dissertation on toy‑based geopolitics, automotive theology, and franchise chaos theory.Settle in. It gets weird fast.#TangentialGiants #ComicCon #Transformers #GIJoe #FastAndFurious #NerdCulture #PopCulturePodcast #GeekTalk #ComicBookLore #MovieUniverses #PodcastLife #FandomTalk #ToyLore #FranchiseChaos
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