Title: Who Are the Unbelievables? The Trillion Dollar Kid #1
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: June 17th, 2026
Price: $3.99 USD

When I was visiting my home town, I learned that my childhood comic book store moved just down the block from my parent’s home. While I usually went there for the Magic the Gathering cards, rather than comics, I decided to pay them a visit and check out what they had. Among the new releases, one issue caught my eye: The Trillion Dollar Kid, by Image Comics.

The cover, featuring a small boy and a metallic, suited butler sparked my imagination and I decided to read it further. 

The Plot

Tommy Townsend III, the Trillion Dollar Kid appears in the story to be a happy-go-lucky kid who creates whimsical inventions for the benefit of this town. He lives in a massive mansion, takes a roller coaster to school, and holds press-conferences with his picture perfect family, all showing off their pearly-whites. 

We don’t see too much external conflict in this first issue. We’re told the backstory of how Tommy Townsend inherited and created his vast fortune, through a rivalry of increasingly sophisticated bandage innovations. More immediately, the principal of his school wants him to tear down the giant roller coaster transit system that Tommy built over the school, but when Tommy offers to pay off his mortgage, his objections quickly vanish. 

Not all is so cheery in his life, however. We learn that while Tommy’s life is superficially abundant, there’s a lot that’s still missing. Early on in the comic, Tommy spots a kid walking to school and refusing to take his rollercoaster. When asking the kid why he didn’t want to ride the roller coaster, the kid dresses Tommy Down telling him that some things don’t need to be improved, and that Tommy doesn’t actually have any friends despite everything that he does for the town. Worse than that, Tommy doesn’t have any family either. The parents and sister he shows up to press conferences are just actors. When their shift ends, they tell Tommy that he’s the best boss ever and promise to be extra parental the next day. Tommy’s real parents have been missing for years, and Tommy plans on figuring out what happened to them. 

Analysis 

The Trillion Dollar kid has a lot of potential as a character. The early themes that emerge are the classic, “Money can’t buy happiness”. Even though most people are nice to Tommy, ranging from the reporters in his press conference to his artificial family, most of his relationships are transactional in some way. His parents clock out of their shifts at a low point where Tommy could use some compassion, reasserting that he is their employer, not a member of their family. There’s also the fruitlessness in the whimsy of inventions that he is creating. Every example that we see in the story feels like Tommy trying to outdo himself, hoping that if he adds enough whimsy to the world, it will make up for the hollowness inside of him. 

The comic also introduces the question of how much attention is too much attention. Early on, we learn that Tommy’s grandfather and parents kept low profiles in their times, and yet Tommy has deliberately made the opposite decision to show himself to the world and be as grand and Gatsbyan as possible. It leaves a lot of room for that decision to backfire in the future. But the most interesting mystery that the story opens up is why did his parents disappear? That’s the question that I’m going to keep in mind as the next issue of The Trillion Dollar Kid plays out. 

The only part of the story that missed for me on occasion was the humor. While I know I’m not the target demographic of this comic, I felt like some of the jokes were five or more years out of date (such as the invention he made that sends mosquitos to Ohio). I think younger readers will notice that more, not less than adults. 

Final Score (4.5/5) 

The Trillion Dollar Kid introduces an interesting new character, and piques the interest of new readers in the world of the Unbelievables. I look forward to seeing where this character goes in the future.