Deus claiming to be the 98th largest economy in the world sounds crazy, but the fact is that the top 10 wealthiest people in the world each have more money than the GDPs of the bottom 100 nations. Even having “only” 1 billion means you have more money in the bank (assuming all your assets are liquid) than the annual gross income of the bottom 14 countries, at least in 2015. Now, a lifetime of personal wealth accumulation does not compare to the annual income of a country. The next year that country will generate that much revenue all over again (assuming global economic stability) so personal wealth vs. GDP is not a real comparison. Still it makes for a cool brag, and Deus may be throwing it out there to test the general economic acumen of the room. But probably mostly to brag. Also remember his claim takes place in a flashback to a decade-ish ago, cause otherwise people will try and look up exactly how much money he’s claiming to have and I don’t have the time or frankly the interest to work up a historical timeline of his wealth. It’s double digit billions, probably less than Batman at this point, but with not nearly as much tied up in themed private fighter jets. Every time I see a Batwing get shot down in a Justice League cartoon, I can’t help but think that’s got to be like what, $20-30 million dollars easily? F-16s are something like $17 million, and they’re made on an assembly line. Batwings are all custom built and dare I say it, artisanal?

Also keep in mind that most of what Deus is saying here is a sales pitch. Being skeptical that the king of a sliver of a nation could become the richest men in Africa is probably sensible. Of course, who knows what Deus’s plans really are? Besides the Shadow. That guy knows. I mean, it’s his job.

As per requests from last week, here is the money map from the talk show’s set. (updated with the kr symbol over Sweden) I will admit there are a few patches I used the “Unspecified Currency Symbol” in a few places: ¤ mostly because I had already spent at least 2 hours on the map and it was getting really tedious and I needed to finish it to get the backgrounds done, and also because there are a few spots where there are a bunch of small countries right next to each other and the size of the font I was using to make it remotely legible in the background of the comic meant their symbols wouldn’t show up unless they were all the same across their contiguous area. I can probably fix it if anyone is terribly put out about it since most of the work is done already. I can also do one with the country borders showing if there’s any particular demand for it. I only hope the symbols I used are current. I did just enough googling to get the map presentable. One thing I learned while doing this is that the US dollar and the peso (some pesos, not all) both use the $ symbol, which is slightly disappointing, but obviously made my job easier, or it would have if my source listed the symbols and then all the countries that used it instead of country then symbol. :/

I didn’t get a chance to update the vote incentive because I had to get two double pages drawn this week, which put me slightly behind but I’ll get to it. I want to see it colored as well.

Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.