Comic Book / Eight Billion Genies

I wish...

"What would you wish for?
Would you ask for something for yourself or take something from another?
Would you help, or would you hurt?
Would you change yourself, or change the world?
And forget about your wish.
What about everyone else's?"

—The closing lines of the first issue

Imagine you had a single wish that you could use to get anything or do anything you can imagine. What would you use it for? Would you ask to be famous? To get that Cool Car you've always wanted? What about superpowers? Or meeting your childhood heroes?

Now imagine if everyone got a wish like that. What do you think would happen?

That's the question on everyone's mind when eight billion genies, one for every person on Earth, materialize out of thin air to grant humanity's wildest dreams. Within minutes, the world is turned upside down as billions of people decide to have their fantasies become reality.

Eight Billion Genies is an eight-issue Image Comics comic book series written by Charles Soule with art by Ryan Browne. It follows a world forever changed by the appearance of magical genies able to grant any wish imaginable and whose motives are shrouded in mystery. Meanwhile, Will Williams and the people inside his small Michigan bar grapple with their everchanging reality and what to use their omnipotent wishes on.

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I wish... to see examples of tropes used in Eight Billion Genies! Done!

• Achilles' Heel: Floyd Faughn's wish was that people would believe in him, allowing him to compel almost anyone to do as he wished and leading to him becoming one of the most powerful individuals in the post-genie world... but he requires some ability for belief in his victims for this to work out: people that believe in nothing at all, such as lawyers or eventually Robbie, are unaffected.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Robbie is a bright, Genre Savvy twelve-year-old who has the wisdom and maturity not to make an impulsive wish like many other children around the world. Lampshaded by the genies themselves, who note that Robbie is bright for his age and responsible enough to not make an impulsive wish.
• Age Without Youth: Daisy and Betty end up effectively immortal. They spend over 700 years with the bodies of seventy-year-olds.
• The Alcoholic:
  • At the start of the story, Ed is Drowning His Sorrows over the loss of his wife and his struggles as a single father to raise his son Robbie, drinking himself to sleep and angrily ranting when Will offers to give him coffee instead... until he realizes that Robbie is right next to him.
  • Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, and Jim Morrison were all avid drinkers and the Remnants of them produced from people's wishes are no different. They spend almost all of their page time drinking at Will's bar and refusing to pay until Will complains. Ernest goes into a tirade when Will prepares to refuse service until Ernest can pay his tab, whereas Dorothy asks for martinis so she's soused when she inevitably goes poof from No Ontological Inertia.
• All Wishes Granted: This is the premise of the comic, as all eight billion people on Earth are suddenly granted one wish each.
• Ambiguously Brown: The art style makes it hard to tell if Brian is supposed to be African-American or just a white guy with curly hair and a tan. However, his middle name Demetrius is a very "black" name, and it's possible that he could be mixed and deliberately drawn with ambiguous racial features.
• Amoral Attorney: A group of lawyers, with their skills regarding rules proving to be very useful in a world of genies, establishes Exactitude, a lawyer haven, and begin selling their services to the leaders of other havens. Their amorality helps them remain neutral in the new political landscape. It also gives them immunity to Floyd Faughn, who wished for people to believe in him, since a lawyer believes whatever they're paid to believe - and therefore in nothing at all.
• Animal Mecha: Dave Masters, a disgruntled car assembly line worker, uses his wish to get a "carasaurus" that could breathe fire and devour other cars after he lost his job when the factory closed.
• Anti-Magic: Havens are made by wishing an area, and everyone and everything within it, to be unaffected by wishes from the outside. It's effective not just against the direct wishing, but also the indirect consequences, such as the afore-mentioned carasaurus failing to so much as dent the seemingly much more fragile Lampwick Bar.
• Anyone Can Die: Due to the chaos that the genies bring to Earth, people start dying off in rapid numbers as the intended or unintended consequences of wishes spiral out of control. Heck, population control is the whole point of the genies in the first place. By the end of the book, only a handful of characters are left: Betty, Daisy, and Will are the last people left on Earth when Daisy makes the ultimate wish.
• Apocalypse How: The genies' arrival on Earth has triggered a Class 1 Apocalypse, as people's ill-thought out wishes lead to enormous death and destruction. Nearly two billion people, a fourth of Earth's population, die within eight days of the genies' arrival. A large part of the U.S. has been covered by a tarp labeled "Dougland", South America is a barren wasteland, and the planet has a chunk bitten out of it by the moon. And this is before the World-Wrecking Wave...
• Apocalyptic Logistics: Played with. Although most of the world is thrown into chaos soon after G-Day, the Lampwick Bar & Grill continues to have fully functional electricity, running water, and even internet/cellular service. Justified because Will Williams' wish was for the bar to remain unaffected by any other wishes, making it a safe haven from the madness outside.
• Arc Number: "Eight". All eight billion people on Earth have their own genie to grant one wish of theirs. The story tracks the effects of the genies in multiples of eight. Eight seconds, eight minutes, eight hours, eight days, and so on. The series is eight issues long. And, of course, there are the eight humans in the Lampwick at the moment of G-Day. By genie standards, that is. An unborn fetus is counted, but not the bartender Will Williams, because he's secretly a genie.
• Artificial Human: People created through a wish — such as a dead person brought back to life or the inhabitants of a wished-up town — are not actual people, but "remnants". They have all of the memories and mannerisms of the real person, but disappear soon after the wisher dies.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A common wish is to grow gigantic, with everyone from children to adults wishing to tower over buildings. One page shows that a man wished to grow so tall he could be seen from space... and promptly begins to suffocate from the lack of oxygen since his head is in the stratosphere.
• Back from the Dead:
  • A librarian named Frances used her wish to meet her literary heroes, Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker. Unfortunately for Frances, she got caught up in a storm of other wishes, including someone who asked for the Midas Touch, who killed her by turning her into a gold statue. Hemingway and Parker would eventually find their way to the Lampwick Bar and Grill to drink until they suffer from No Ontological Inertia after Frances' death.
  • Ed uses his wish to bring his wife, June, back to life, wording it extremely carefully to ensure that there isn't any of "that monkey's paw shit". Her husband and son are overjoyed to have her back and the genies applaud him for making such a thorough and clear wish.
• Bait-and-Switch: A downright sneaky one: the scene where the genies appear takes place in a hospital, immediately after the birth of a baby, making it look like the baby was lucky number eight billion. They weren't - the genies count unborn fetuses. This, in turn, means that NINE genies appeared in the Lampwick at that moment...
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The genies are benevolent enough to give advice and repeatedly warn people to be mindful of what they wish for as their intent will affect the outcome. Perhaps more importantly, the things they don't intend are utterly ignored; one page shows a man who wished to be a giant large enough to be seen from space, only to start suffocating from the lack of oxygen in the upper atmosphere.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Vlad the Impaler was a genie in human form with Complete Immortality, in a period where he decided to see how brutal and depraved he could be as he conquered as much as he could. His cannibalism and regeneration is what inspired the story of Dracula.
• Benevolent Genie: While the genies are amoral at best given how they're happy to grant blatantly destructive wishes like the carasaurus or turning a person into a vampire, they're never malicious about what they do. They're also happy to be consulted for context and advice up to the point that the wish is actually made and will fulfill a wish to the full spirit of the wish rather than the letter of the wish. But they can still act as a Literal Genie if a wish is ill-thought out and will not care about the consequences unless they're "boring" or would deny others their wish.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Ernest Hemingway initially presents himself as the gentlemanly scholar-poet "Papa" upon arriving at the Lampwick. A few drinks later, Ernest is ranting about how his whiskey glass has run dry and calls Will a son of a bitch whose "shitty cantina" could be bought for a poem Ernest writes onto a napkin.
  • Floyd Faughn is a self-professed "ideas man" who leads Hope's Hollow, an enclave that's an island of safety and sanity in the post-genie world. He presents himself as affable and loving and reasonable, helped by his ability to compel people to follow him, but his ultimate goal is to eliminate all of the other enclaves and Take Over the World.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The genies play by some rules that seem arbitrarily contradictory. They won't grant wishes that alter people's free will on a large scale (like asking for world peace), though focused mind control/brainwashing powers are okay. They also don't care how many people are killed as a result of someone's errant wish (granted, winnowing down the population is why they're there). Lastly, they are able to offer minor assistance—interpreting languages, offering insight on what other people are doing, and so on—at their discretion without requiring a wish to do so.
• Body Horror: When a woman makes a wish to "be one with the sea", she is turned into a gigantic squid/whale/fish/mermaid creature as a result. She is thrilled at first as it allows her to freely explore the ocean, but eventually she gets lonely without any humans to talk to. It doesn't help that when she does meet people, they instantly think she's some Cthulu-esque Eldritch Abomination and attack.
• Break the Cutie: Happens to Robbie in issue #3. He starts off as a noble superhero trying to do the right thing, but soon becomes shell-shocked from the carnage he has to inflict on the psychopathic supervillains he fights and the gruesome deaths of his super-allies.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": Robbie's superhero costume features a "R" insignia on the Utility Belt and the clasps for his Badass Cape.
• Can't Live Without You: Remnants disappear after the person who wished for them dies.
• Combo Platter Powers: Wang wishes to become whatever he needs to be to survive in the world forever changed by genies and for the abilities he needs to protect whoever he's with. In response, his genie gives him a futuristic combat suit, Charles Atlas Superpower, a variety of weapons including two Power Fists that shoot powerful beams of energy, and a wide variety of skills from martial arts to being able to speak English to hotwiring a car.
• Cool Old Guy: Will Williams is the proprietor of the Lampwick Bar and Grill who consistently serves as a voice of reason amidst the chaos. He's Crazy-Prepared and Properly Paranoid enough to have a bunker full of food and supplies in case of a major crisis and spent his wish to turn his bar into a safe haven for himself and anyone else from the wishes of others. His past is shrouded in mystery and at some point he learned to speak fluent Mandarin Chinese, acting as a translator for Wang and Lifeng. We later find out he was a genie from the last time they all came to Earth 800 years ago.
• Crazy-Prepared: Will converted the basement of his bar into an armored bunker with a little bit of everything, from food to supplies to weapons in case he needs to hunker down. He figured that he needed to be prepared for a wildfire after watching all the friction being created all over the world even before the genies came to Earth.
• Deathbed Confession: When Robbie's superhero friends are killed by a particularly powerful supervillain, Robbie has a breakdown because at 12 years old, he's too young to process all this death and destruction. The seemingly-adult King Power tries to comfort Robbie by admitting with his dying breath that he's only 11.
• The Dog Bites Back: Bernie Haysmith is an unabashed criminal and corporate scumbag who blackmailed Wang Zhang into committing corporate espionage. When Wang realizes that this blackmail is meaningless now that the world has been forever changed by the genies, Wang crushes the flash drive and prepares to leave in disgust. In response, Bernie attempts to wish Wang dead, only for Wang to react first and shoot an energy blast at Bernie's head. That said, the reader would be hard-pressed to feel sympathy for such a Hate Sink.
• A Dog Named "Dog": All of the genies respond to the name, "Genie". No mention is made of how they don't get each other mixed up, but they can be summoned for advice or to make a wish simply by calling their name.
• Domesticated Dinosaurs: One man seen in the first issue is depicted riding a theropod like a cowboy even as it devours numerous people.
• Domino Mask: Robbie's eyes are covered by one of these when he becomes a superhero as part of his wish to his genie.
• Egopolis: A good chunk of the southern US is turned into "Dougland".
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • The death of Robbie's parents frees him from Floyd's brainwashing, as he no longer has anything to believe in, which is crucial to Floyd's power. He kills Floyd after the latter's forces attack El Futuro and kill its leader, at which point Robbie promises to protect the people of El Futuro himself (including Betty and Carlos, who start a family) and leads the haven for 54 peaceful years before dying of old age.
  • The Bada-Bangs gain admission to Fun City through clever use of their remaining genies, after spending several years in a remnant town that abruptly vanishes (including the band's romantic partners) when its host human dies. Alex and Daisy move past their baggage and get married, and Brian finds a new love in Fun City. And while Brian does die relatively young in his 50s, it at least wasn't from a violent skirmish or wish gone awry, and the nature of his own wish leaves Daisy immortal when Alex dies twenty years later.
• Ensemble Cast: The story focuses primarily on Will Williams and the people who happened to be at his bar when the genies came to Earth, sharing focus between them as they all try to make sense of their current situation.
• Eternal Recurrence: It isn't the first time that genies have comes to Earth. Every time the sentient global population reaches a certain point, usually eight billion, the amount of want causes their return as some sort of cosmic release valve. Then a period of chaos ensues as everyone makes wishes until the last person left wishes for a new world, and the process begins anew. The only out is a mythical "ultimate wish" that'll satisfy the need for wishing forever.
• Exact Words: Unusually for a work about genies, this is averted/subverted - unspoken intent is taken into account, and it's this - along with potential conflicts with other wishes - that causes unintended consequences. Exact wording, however, can be used to work around this - the lawyers of the Exactitude haven end up making a business out of writing wishes for the leaders of other havens.
• Fading Away: The genies fizzle away like a mirage after granting their person's wish. It seems to be a form of death for them, as their population gradually goes down along with humanity's as more and more wishes are made. And yet, the genies remain excited and willing to grant as many wishes as they can, going so far as to nullify wishes that would negate other wishes. Genies also suffer this fate if their person dies before they can make a wish, only lamenting that the wish never got to be used.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Invoked; Helen Gutierrez used her wish to create a replica of her small hometown from 1982, complete with period-appropriate movies, fashion, shops, and people.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Genies appear as tiny floating toddlers with etherial, wispy bodies. In reality, they resemble glowing trees/coral with hundreds of branches, each end tipped with a prismatic ball.
  "Let me slip into something... a bit more comfortable."
• Fountain of Youth: Unsurprisingly, a common wish among the elderly is to be young again. While a simple and helpful wish, it unfortunately deprives these folks of a wish that could have protected them from the rest of the chaos.
• Flying Brick: Robbie uses his wish to become this, with powers of flight, super-strength, and super-durability.
• Flying Seafood Special: Fun City is a haven for creative artists; it's an immense city with tall art-deco skyscrapers riding on the back of a flying winged whale.
• Funny Background Event:
  • While Wang and Lifeng are discussing what to do with their wishes, their genies pass the time by thumb wrestling, only for Lifeng's to cheat by increasing the size of their thumb.
  • During a battle with giant Kaiju in Tokyo, the Notzilla monster is actually a man in a costume, complete with a zipper in the back and a wristwatch on the left arm.
• Freedom from Choice: Some people in the post-wish society suffer from "wishlock", where they are unable to make a wish because thinking about making a wish causes paralysis from the other wishes they don't make.
• Genius Loci: Someone's wish has given the Earth a face, arms, and legs, while another wish has made the moon a ravenous being that devours Santa Claus and his reindeer.
• Genre Savvy:
  • Robbie says that he's read enough comic books to know that wishing for immortality is a very bad idea that could go wrong any number of ways. He instead uses his wish to become a superhero capable of defending himself and his parents while searching for another save haven for them.
  • His father Ed has a similar mindset, very carefully wording his wish to avoid it backfiring.
• Gone Horribly Right: Several wishes end up this way. For instance, a girl is shown wishing that her parents would "burn in hell", only to look on in horror as her parents are burned away until nothing's left but their hands.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Wang shoots an energy blast from his Power Fist and swipes it across a vampire's torso to cut him in half.
• Happily Married:
  • While they do bicker over what to do in their current crisis, it's clear that Wang Zhang and his wife Lifeng dearly love each other and the two fret about one another constantly.
  • Similarly, Ed realizes that he's been a bad father to Robbie and uses his wish to bring back June, Robbie's mother, so they can be a whole family again. Ed and June are nothing but affectionate for one another and care deeply about their son.
  • Betty and Carlos, son of the leader of El Futuro, end up being happily married for several decades, with several children and grandchildren.
• Hate Sink: Bernie Haysmith threatened Wang's family, career, and ability to stay in the U.S., forcing Wang to commit corporate espionage and steal an entire company's prized secrets for personal profit. Then, when Wang refuses on account of Bernie's blackmail being meaningless with society all but collapsed, Bernie tries to wish Wang dead. Readers can hardly fault Wang for shooting first.
• Heroic Build:
  • Justified. The genies are Reality Warpers who can grant virtually any wish. As such, it's a trivial thing for them to give someone exaggerated physical proportions, such as giving a child biceps bigger than his own head.
  • When Robbie wishes for his genie to transform him into a powerful superhero strong enough to protect his parents and find a safe haven for them amidst the chaos, the genie follows his childish drawing to a T, making him so huge that his arms are as big as his formerly child-sized body. Meanwhile, his head and face remain unchanged, poking above his muscles thanks to his equally muscular neck. At the very least, as Robbie gets older he properly grows into his superhero body and simply becomes a huge hulking guy as an adult.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Some people end up becoming very attached to their genies.
  "About twenty worlds back, someone was so attached to their genie they couldn't imagine letting them go. Their only friend. Kind of sad."
• Humans Are Flawed: Will eventually realizes that this is why the genies keep reappearing, because humans are never satisfied.
  "Every wish we grant is the same wish. 'I wish I had enough.' "
• Humongous Mecha: Many wishes involve people wanting giant robots to pilot. One in the first issue has two Arm Cannons (one of which is used to vaporize a poor sap) while another from the first issue is a sendup to Combattler V.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: The mythical Ultimate Wish that will satisfy the need for wishing forever and end the cycle of genies returning turns out to be for everyone to love the way they wish to be loved.
• Immortality: The final issue takes place 800 years after the events of the first, and three characters survive to the end:
  • Will Williams, who's actually a genie. He was the genie who granted the last wish in the previous iteration, and has lived for nearly 1,400 years as a result.
  • Daisy, lead vocalist for the Bada-Bings. It's implied that her tontine wish (with Alex and Brian) made her immortal as long as she doesn't use the wish.
  • Betty Tzang, daughter of Wang and Lifeng. Her mother's wish was that Betty would survive to use her own wish.
• Implacable Woman: Betty eventually becomes this. Because of her mother's wish, Betty is immortal until she makes a wish, so she is determined to become the last person on Earth to do so. She ends up hunting down everyone else with a genie until she's the only one left.
• Incompatible Orientation: Daisy doesn't learn Brian is gay until long after she wastes her wish trying to make him fall in love with her (it didn't work because he was inside the wish-proof bar when she made the wish but she wasn't). It begs the question of whether or not she would've made that wish had she known it would change a fundamental part of him (as opposed to "just" overriding his free will).
• In-Series Nickname: Humanity ends up using the name "G-Day" for the day when the eight billion genies appeared.
• Kid Hero: Twelve-year-old Robbie uses his wish to become a superpowered hero strong enough to protect his parents from harm. One of the fellow heroes he meets on his journey is even younger.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Ernest and Dorothy both suffer from No Ontological Inertia while they're in the middle of talking, dropping their alcohol glasses in the process and shattering them against the table.
• Lack of Empathy: As cheery, friendly, and helpful the genies are, they don't really care what happens as a result of people's wishes. A woman accidentally igniting all of downtown Detroit is met with a shrug. The fact that 2 billion people have died directly or indirectly as a result of the wishes the genies granted in a mere eight days doesn't register to them in the slightest.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Daisy asks if the Remnants of Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, and Jim Morrison are real or not, the genie calls it a good question. They then respond with, "Are you?" while looking directly at the reader from outside any of the panels.
• Literal Genie: Subverted. The genies will give you exactly what you ask for and follow it to the spirit of the letter, only reminding the wishers to be very specific in their intent, as it can affect the outcome of the wish. They also warn people to word their wishes very carefully to avoid unforeseen consequences, but they don't care what happens afterward.
• Lost in Translation: In-Universe, the vampire who attacks Wang tells him to "come to daddy!" while trying to suck Wang's blood. Wang, a Chinese immigrant who only recently learned English via genie magic, shouts, "I am not your son!"
• Love Potion: When Daisy gets her genie, she immediately spends her wish to try and get Brian to fall madly in love with her. Unfortunately for her and luckily for Brian, Will made his wish to render all wishes from outside the bar unable to affect the bar or whatever is inside, nullifying it. Brian is horrified when he learns what she wished for, as it would've denied his freedom to choose who he loved. Alex, who was nursing a crush on her, quickly gives up on it after learning this.
• The Man in the Moon: The Moon now has a face, a huge mouth filled with teeth, and eats anything that gets close enough to it.
• Mass Super-Empowering Event:
  • A great deal of wishes lead to people wanting superpowers and other abilities that lead them to become superheroes, kickstarting a so-called "Powered Age" eight days after the genies arrived. Robbie is one of these people after he wishes to become someone powerful enough to protect his parents and help them find a safe haven.
  • Even outside of that context, the sheer fact that everyone on Earth suddenly each get a wish that grants them anything they want is a mass-empowering event in its own right.
• Megaton Punch: Robbie is attacked by a strange monster the second he steps out of the door of the bar. But thanks to wishing to become a superhero, he's able to send it flying away with a single punch.
• Morphic Resonance: A genie looks a little like the person they're assigned to — they'll look about the same age and have markings similar to their hair, facial hair, and glasses (if any).
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Will wishes for his bar and anyone and anything inside it to be completely immune to the effects of wishes made outside it. As a result, even a fire-breathing carasaurus pounding on the roof fails to scratch it.
• No Ontological Inertia: Downplayed. People and things created by wishes can last up to a few days following the death of the wisher. These "Remnants" will simply vanish a certain amount of time passes completely without warning. The Remnants of Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, and Jim Morrison all go poof during issues 2 and 3, with Ed and Robbie worrying that this could happen to June if Ed were to die.
• Oh, Crap!: The genies consider eight years (What else?) to be the age of reason at which point children are capable of making a wish. Naturally, every parent in the world is horrified by what that could entail. In fact, one of the core tenets of El Futuro is that children can't make a wish without their parents' permission until they're 25. And given the trouble adults get into with their wishes, this concern is very justified.
• The Omniscient: Every genie seems to understand anything and everything that's going on even if they weren't present for it. They're also shown to be Polyglots able to speak every known Earth language, addressing their chosen person in the language they're most comfortable with, be it English, French, Spanish, or Mandarin Chinese.
• Our Genies Are Different: Earth, a short time from now, gets a visit from eight billion genies, one for every person on Earth. The genies are small, translucent blue creatures from another dimension, they offer one wish each, and there's one of them assigned to every human being on Earth. Madness ensues very quickly.◊ They're not bound by a lamp or any other restriction: they grant wishes because they see it as an art. As a result, they refuse to grant wishes that would cancel out too many other people's (a zombie apocalypse, world peace, any one country taking over the whole world), and break out in applause when they get to grant a completely selfless wish.
• Our Vampires Are Different: One man used his wish to become a bloodsucking vampire and make a meal of Wang, who is on his way to the Lamplighter Bar for his scheduled meeting. The vampire has an Undeathly Pallor and refers to blood as "sweet-red Kool-Aid".
• Papa Wolf: Wang is incredibly protective of his wife and unborn child, declaring that if anything should happen to them, the perpetrator will answer to him. After leaving the bar for his appointment at the Lamplighter Bar, he has no problems with murdering anyone he deems a threat to himself or his family, be it a vampire or the man who blackmailed him and was about to wish him dead.
• Parents as People: Ed clearly loves his son Robbie dearly, but is reeling over the loss of his wife June and drinks himself into a stupor while sitting at the bar. It isn't long before Ed spends his wish to bring June back, knowing full well that he won't be able to give Robbie the upbringing he needs without her.
• Power Perversion Potential: One guy wished to have sex with Jim Morrison, but died of a heart attack during the act, leaving the remnant of Morrison to his own devices for a few days. It's stated that countless people used their wish for sexual gratification, but the story otherwise steers clear of that topic.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Robbie tells a monster to "make like a banana... and split!" before sending it flying with a Megaton Punch when it attacks him.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Just before finishing off the vampire that tried to kill him, Wang says that if he has anything to say about it, the vampire will remain thirsty, forever.
• Production Throwback: Issue 2 reveals the US president to be none other than Jonathan Blades from Charles Soule's Letter 44.
• Properly Paranoid: When the genies first appear, Will Williams instantly decides to wish for all wishes made outside the Lampwick Bar and Grill to be completely unable to affect the bar and anything and anyone inside. It isn't long before dinosaurs, Humongous Mecha, and superpowered people come roaring down the street, but Will's wish protects him, the bar, and everyone inside. Will says that he's seen enough friction happen to prepare for the worst, be it a natural disaster, military threat, or otherwise. His bar's basement is also a bunker stocked with everything from food and water to firearms, though he admits that no one could have possibly prepared for the genies. This is a lie, since Will is a genie who's been through over a dozen cycles already, and would have anticipated a Wishplosion apocalypse. Though given his attitude, he might genuinely have expected some other collapse to happen first.
  Will: I always told myself, "Get ready, Will Williams, because it's a big world out there and anything can happen." And now... looks like... anything can.
• Reality Warper: The genies can make practically anything happen so long as the wishes are worded properly. Their abilities can completely ignore conventional logic and physics, making functional Humongous Mecha, giving people superpowers, and even turning the moon into a ravenous Genius Loci. They even mentioned offhandedly how they could create hundreds of new realities to accommodate the wishes of leading politicans to have their countries rule as a superpower, but they call it far too much work to do so, instead choosing to annul all those wishes.
• Repetitive Name: Lampwick Bar and Grill is owned by Will Williams, a Properly Paranoid Cool Old Guy who acts as the voice of reason in the story. According to the author's notes in the collected edition, this is a clue to his true nature, as Will Smith and Robin Williams both played Aladdin's genie for Disney.
• Rules Lawyer: Exactitude is an enclave in the post-genie world that is composed entirely of lawyers who write loophole-free wishes for their clients. They are paid entirely in genies and have become very powerful as a result.
• Shout-Out:
  • Ed namedrops The Monkey's Paw to make sure his intent to his genie to bring back his wife June hale and healthy is clear.
  • In the minutes after the genies appear, at least eight Mount Dooms appear in various places worldwide.
  • One of the genies mentions that a woman wished for a lightsaber, only to accidentally set downtown Detroit ablaze since she never wished for the skill to use it.
  • Robbie's superhero costume contains tons of references to other famous superheroes. His right arm is covered with metal like Colossus, he's got a shoulder pad akin to a '90s Anti-Hero, and Utility Belt like Batman. He even shouts "Up, up, and away!" like Superman while stepping out the door.
  • An episode of The Simpsons (specifically, "Curse of the Flying Hellfish") is referenced when discussing the idea of "tontines" (a wish that is shared among multiple people and can only be granted when all of them are in agreement).
  • In flashbacks to his youth, Floyd is playing with Battle Beasts action figures, and is shown wearing a Bubblegum Crisis T-shirt.
  • The variant covers feature tributes to other works.
    • A variant for issue #1 is a copy of the American box art for Super Mario Bros. 3. Another variant for issue #7 riffs on the box for Super Mario Bros. 2.
    • The Christian Ward variant for issue #4 replicates John Byrne's cover for The Man of Steel #1.
    • One of the variant covers for issue #8 is drawn in the style of Calvin and Hobbes and channels the spirit of the "Tyrannosaurs in F-14s◊" strip. It depicts a genie resembling Calvin overlooking a scene with a paratrooper Tyrannosaurus rex and several F-35 jets.
• Snobby Hobbies: While the rest of the world struggles to survive in a genie-induced apocalyptic hellscape, the lawyers of Exactitude are first seen playing tennis and golf in their wish-proofed exclusive sanctuary, without a care in the world.
• Starstruck Speechless: A Remnant of Jim Morrison was wished for by a man named Andrew Elizondo who wanted to have sex with him. But Andrew was so starstruck he had a heart attack and dropped dead on the spot before anything could happen.
• Stripped to the Bone: When Wang vaporizes Bernie's face, all that's left of the blackmailer's head is his skull, which promptly falls off his body and onto the table.
• Taken for Granite: A poor librarian named Frances never got to enjoy her wish of meeting her literary heroes, Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker, because she got turned into solid gold by someone who wished for the Midas Touch.
• Take Up My Sword: Near the end of the book, Betty, Wang's and Lifeng's daughter, is shown to have taken up Wang's gear more than seven hundred years after the story began in order to hunt down every other person with a wish so that she'll be the last one left with a wish.
• Uncatty Resemblance: All of the genies bear a resemblance to the person they're bonded to. For instance, Will's genie has the same pointy beard he does, while Alex's has glasses and a much bushier beard.
• Unsound Effect: Wishes in the story are almost always accompanied with the onomatopoeia of "Wisssssh!" followed by the genie fizzling out after completing its wish.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Many people don't intend to cause harm with their wishes, but their ill-thought out wishes or acts as a result of those wishes cause enormous carnage and destruction. One person who wishes for a lightsaber accidentally starts a fire that engulfed all of downtown Detroit. As one of the genies notes, she asked for a lightsaber, not how to use it.
• The Virus: We don't see it in detail, but "Dougland", a region covering a good chunk of the United States, is inhabited by "Dougs" that can turn anybody into a copy of themselves if they get close enough.
• Walking the Earth: Daisy does this after the deaths of Brian and Alex. She does this for 700 years due to her unexpected immortality.
• We Only Have One Chance: People must audition to get into Fun City (a haven for creative artists). They only get one chance to do so, and cannot use wishes to augment or grant talent.
• Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: Ernest asks why anyone would wish for a volcano to erupt, much less eight of them all named "Mount Doom", complaining about how heavy that Foreshadowing is. In the same scene, Ed asks why a child would wish for Robbie's school to be turned into chocolate. Robbie's genie responds that they don't try to explain wishes, they just grant them.
• Wishplosion: This turns out to be the point of the whole thing. The genies will keep returning to Earth for as long as its sentient population collectively feels unfulfilled before reaching a certain size. Every time they do, the person with the last genie has the exclusive right to wish for something that resets the whole thing with different conditions. There is a rumor amongst the genies of an "ultimate wish" that'll permanently satisfy all human needs and desires forever, ending the cycle of genies, but none of them know what it is; a single genie gets left behind to live on the new world each time to try and figure it out. It turns out to be for "everyone to love the way they want to be loved". This results in an Earth with a population of eight billion, but no genies this time around.
• Wizard Duel: Exactitude initiates a wish war against Hope's Hollow. This consists of a rapid depletion of genies on both sides, as each attacking wish is met with a counter-wish that nullifies its effects. The war ends in less than a minute, and Hope's Hollow survives with only three genies remaining.
• World-Healing Wave: Several months after someone wishes for a World-Wrecking Wave, another wish is used to restore the world and bring back most plant and animal life (except for the humans killed earlier).
• World-Wrecking Wave: Several weeks after "G-Day", someone (Floyd Faughn) makes a wish for an energy wave that scours the Earth and kills most life forms. The only survivors are people who were in reinforced bunkers or those living in wish-proofed enclaves.

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