Billionaires The lives of the rich and powerful : Jeff Bezos, the Koch bros, Rupert Murdoch

The latest in Cunningham's collection of concise, plainly drawn comics, Billionaires exposes the lives and lies of four modern billionaires: Rupert Murdoch, The Koch Brothers, and Jeff Bezos. Cunningham asks us to consider the actions of these individuals in the larger contexts of growing inequality, climate change, and political instability. Each section illustrates how these wealthy white men got their start--dispelling myths of self-made status along the way--and how they've leveraged their influence for personal gain, often at the expense of others. Though Trump does not feature as one of the individuals under investigation, he makes regular appearances, seen as a consequence of the political maneuvering of Murdoch, the Koch brothers, and others associated with them. Cunningham concludes that "no one should have such unelected power, and that includes more liberal billionaires," who he does not profile here, though his introduction leaves that door open for future works. It may benefit readers to re-read Cunningham's prior work, Supercrash (2010), which dovetails well into this more narrow investigation.

Cunningham (The Age of Selfishness) cogently combines portraits of the lives and careers of Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, and Jeff Bezos into a graphic treatise that considers both the responsibility that wealth and power demands and the inevitability of such power corrupting absolutely. In chapters on Murdoch and the Koch Brothers, Cunningham portrays young men of privilege corrupted by a relentless desire to amass wealth and power at the expense of others, whether in Murdoch's collusion with conservative leaders and his brutal suppression of unions, or the Koch Brothers' efforts to bring fringe Libertarian philosophies into the Republican political mainstream. Cunningham then demonstrates how Bezos's comparably modest upbringing didn't prevent him from building an empire that exploits its employees. The minimalist color palette and pared-down visual style render this complex study on the machinations of billionaires consumable in a single sitting. Cunningham jumps from shot to shot through panels infused with irony and symbolism, such as the recurring motif of money emerging from industrial pipes, or giant hands and feet grabbing and crushing. The result is a witty but brutal critique of capitalism and corruption. (Apr.)

British cartoonist Cunningham serves up the tales of four moguls with outsize influence on the lives of the rest of us. The new gilded age is America-centric, though far from confined to the U.S., since "there are few geographic barriers to enormous wealth." Around the world, the ultrawealthy have asserted policies to undo governmental controls on the economy and dismantle the welfare state, however benign, whether breaking the backs of unions or obliterating pension funds. Cunningham focuses on Rupert Murdoch, David and Charles Koch, and Jeff Bezos. Murdoch began by assuming control of a lucrative media network in his native Australia, then worked his way into mostly crafty acquisitions of other networks in the U.K. and U.S. by recruiting leading politicians to evade monopoly statutes. Of course, he made his share of errors, including his purchase of MySpace, which he bought for $580 million in 2005 but dumped six years later for $35 million. The Koch brothers, by Cunningham's account, were even more politically aggressive, and their meddling has "only helped weaken democratic safeguards that had previously kept at bay would-be demagogues like Donald Trump." They inherited a fortune, too. Only Bezos came from a comparatively modest background, though, to judge by this narrative, he has been no less politically ruthless. Cunningham's drawing style is faux naif, representational in the manner of Derf Backderf, if a little less controlled, but his writing style is terse and declarative: "Murdoch's drift to the political right began in 1975. That year, Australia suffered a constitutional crisis." His own tendency is clearly to the left, but regardless of stance, it seems inarguable that we are all at least complicit in the power of the mega-rich. "None of us have to buy from Amazon," he writes. "It isn't against the law not to contribute to Jeff Bezos's fortune." The rich really are different, as this lightly presented but utterly serious presentation proves beyond argument. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.