Geiger vol. 1
Geoff Johns enjoyed nearly unparalleled success at DC across nearly two decades. Beetween acclaimed and best-selling runs on titles like “Flash,” “JSA,” “Justice League,” and – best of all – “Green Lantern” it seemed like nothing could stop him. Then he became co-head of the DC film crew over at Warner Bros. just in time to take part in the deeply troubled reshoots for “Justice League” and for the film itself to become a huge critical and commercial failure. Between that and the ill-advised “Watchmen” sequel “Doomsday Clock,” which sold well despite no one really liking it, it felt like his days of dominance at the company were at an end. Which is why I’m here writing about his new creator-owned series “Geiger” with “Doomsday Clock” and “Batman: Earth One” artist Gary Frank.
Joe Glow. The Man of Mass Destruction. The Walking Bomb. The Meltdown Man. They’re all different names, but all refer to one person: Tariq Geiger, We’re told early on that everything he did, he did for family and we’re introduced to him trying to save his own as the bombs start to fall in the year 2030. He’s able to get them into their bunker, but Tariq doesn’t make it and catches the full force of a nuclear blast. Except he doesn’t die. He becomes something more. A walking bomb whose explosive power is contained only by the boron sticks attached to his radiation suit. Geiger feels that the only thing left for him to do in this world is watch over his family’s bunker until it’s safe for them to come out. Fate, however, has other plans for The Glowing Man.
Johns’ great strength with his DC work was how he was able to take years of tangled continuity and seamlessly reintegrate it into a character and make it seem like it all mattered. That’s not something he can do with a brand-new property like “Geiger.” He does have decades of knowledge about how to write a good superhero comic, and that’s what you get to see on each page of this new series. It may take place in a post-apocalyptic setting that’s alternately colorful and war-torn, but “Geiger” is very much a superhero series and one the writer seems keen on building out from this initial title.
Based on this first volume, I can’t say I’m completely sold on this idea. The best thing about this volume is its presentation. Johns knows how to tell a story and even if this one doesn’t offer any real twists to the “Old Guy Learns to Have Faith in Humanity Again” it at least delivers the goods with a maximum of efficiency and a minimum of stupidity. All the familiar beats are there from Geiger’s tragic origin, to the kids in trouble who need his help, to the remnants of the U.S. Government who – if they’re not exactly up to no good – are at least not very sympathetic to those in need. Johns knows what he needs to do in order to get you to care about his protagonist and his friends, and even though I could see his manipulations at work, I still wanted to root for Geiger and his makeshift family.
The thing is that I can’t tell whether I did this because of, or in spite of the fact that “Geiger” can get very silly at times. Sometimes it feels intentional, such as with the many factions that are currently ruling over Las Vegas. There’s the King, a petulant man-child lording over a medieval-themed goon squad, who is the story’s main villain and very credible “boo-hiss” one at that thanks to his unwillingness to have anything to do with subtlety. We’ve also got a 1920’s themed Vegas lord in Miss Borden, and the excellently named Safari Bob who is talked about like he’s one guy you don’t want to cross, even though we only see him as a middle-aged guy in a safari outfit. We’ve also got the Organ People, your token cannibal group for this kind of setting, who only eat the body parts they can’t use to replace their own. Oh, and the Army has its own robot that was either based on or inspired a daily comic strip named Junkyard Joe.
They’re all colorful characters and we all know that a superhero is nothing without his rogues gallery. The thing is that you’re either going to have to decide real quick whether this Vegas-themed host of villainy is for you because Johns seems committed to it. I’m more inclined to laugh with it than at it since you get the feeling that the writer doesn’t mean for you to take it entirely seriously either. More of a problem is how he deals with Geiger himself. While his introductory scene is suitably tragic, we see that he’s become a sullen hermit in the following 20 years who’s still able to crank out one-liners on demand. There’s an uneasy balance between pathos and entertainment in the character that doesn’t find its equilibrium until he meets the kids who need saving and Johns is able to find some genuine humor with him while making him an action-movie superhero.
While I’ve written a lot about the writer up to this point, this is also Frank’s project as well. He’s been delivering lots of great, detailed art over the years and managing the impressive trick of making his characters look grounded in otherwise fantastic settings. That’s true again in “Geiger” and he’s also improved his frequent issue of having his character’s eyes look in unnatural directions.
As for the art itself, it’s always exciting to look at. He’s good with the drama as Geiger’s efforts to get his family into the bunker has a lot of it going on and he’s able to sell every panel of it. The title character’s big “Glowing Man” full-page reveal is suitably impressive, as is the zooming-out effect over a couple pages at the end of the first issue to reveal Vegas in all its glory. We also get some exciting action scenes as Geiger has to take on the nasties of the wasteland – human and otherwise – with the multi-car fight against the Organ People being a particular highlight. Even the silly stuff feels like it belongs in the series, and that’s how I know that Frank is doing a really good job.
This first volume of “Geiger” feels like a blockbuster superhero movie that was made for comics rather than the big screen. It has all the flash and style you’d expect, but it doesn’t feel like it has anything new to say. That’s not as much of a problem as it could have been when Johns and Frank make the familiar work as well as they do here. Where it becomes a problem is when they ask me to invest in two upcoming series – “Junkyard Joe” from Johns and Frank, and “The Redcoat” with Johns and Bryan Hitch – based on what I’ve read in this one. The writer lets us know that he’s trying to build a new set of American Tall Tales with these series and while that sounds like an admirable goal on paper, what he’s really asking the reader to do is to buy into his new superhero universe. “Geiger” is at least good enough to get me to consider buying whatever series comes next on a case-by-case basis.