The nuclear apocalypse happens in 2030 and Tariq Geiger manages to get his family to their fallout shelter in time - but gets locked out himself. It’s now 20 years later and Geiger has somehow survived, gaining superpowers from the radiation no less, and is waiting for the radiation levels to go down before opening up the shelter and reuniting with his family. But civilisation has broken down in the intervening years and, after one too many vigilante interferings, Vegas villains want Geiger’s head - as well as a valuable package two kids have stolen and are now on the run, into the Nevada desert, towards the “glowing man”...
Geoff Johns and Gary Frank break free from DC for their first creator-owned Image title, Geiger, and it’s an underwhelming book. Generally I found their DC books to be unremarkable but I also understood that they had to colour within the corporate lines - they couldn’t take risks or do anything too crazy with the likes of Superman, Batman and the Watchmen characters because DC wouldn’t let them; they’re their characters.
So it’s disappointing that when Johns/Frank create their own superhero character, they’ve created something that could easily be published at DC/Marvel. Geiger and the story he’s in could be substituted for the likes of Ghost Rider, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, or any other middling character with powers; there’s nothing too special or unique about him or his story.
Maybe this is the best they can do though - generic superhero comics? In which case we’re seeing the extent of their abilities and their books just aren’t for me. Or maybe it’s deliberate. I’m sure they saw the sales of books like Doomsday Clock and Batman: Earth One and thought they’d be multi-millionaires if they owned those characters. So maybe they decided to create similar books but with their own character, appeal to that same audience, and try to reap the rewards? Either way, Geiger’s not a particularly brilliant book.
Contrivance is the order of the day, as it so often is with Johns. Two nobodies happen to find the “nuclear football” which holds the locations of all the remaining nuke sites in the US (apparently they didn’t all go off 20 years ago), and, even though it’s the most valuable thing to the people they bring it to, they put it aside to play casino games, allowing a waitress to walk away with it. How convenient! Then, in her tiny room, two burly men crowd in, one of whom is spritzed in the face with something, and then the other just happens to disappear momentarily (it’s a confusingly-drawn sequence), allowing the kids to make off with the bag. It’s all so contrived. But it has to be this way because Plot.
The US government is still there but is weakened (plot!), which means the gangs of Las Vegas are now in control but they’re themed gangs for no reason. So there’s a Camelot-inspired bunch, and a roaring ‘20s group. There was an American Dad! episode about a Disneyland parody called Familyland where the park is locked down and factions arbitrarily spring up based on the areas of the park they’re in. This is exactly the same thing except it’s not meant to be funny, even though it is.
When he turns into his glowing skeleton form, Geiger can melt metal (ie. handcuffs) but not the thin cloth cape he’s always wearing (he probably shops at the same place Hulk gets his pants, right?), or a gun when the scene requires him to pick it up and shoot it. He finds out his family’s fate just when he needs to help the kids, who he just happens to come across (because the Nevada desert isn’t a big place or anything). And that’s ignoring the fact that his name is Geiger, who happened to be one of the few people with a nuclear fallout shelter in his backyard, his powers happen to be radiation-themed, and he lives in a post-nuclear war landscape! There’s far more contrivance here but I’ll move onto the derivative stuff, because it doesn’t stop at American Dad!
The most obvious comparison is to the Fallout games, not least New Vegas, and the post-apocalyptic world is exactly like Mad Max (the organ people = war boys). There’s a robot soldier character called Junkyard Joe that’s just the T-1000 and there’s a Game of Thrones Joffrey-esque character as the main baddie. Gary Frank’s art is top-notch throughout (though he’s not doing anything more impressive than in his previous books) but his character design for Geiger is just Ghost Rider but less biker-y, or a more muscular Death.
Johns just isn’t very imaginative. He took a lot of prefabricated elements and stuck them together into this chase template. He’s planning on a Geiger-extended universe which is set at key war moments in America’s history, starting with the Revolutionary War and going up to 2050 (ie. this book), so he won’t even have to try hard at all in creating most of those environments because they’re all well-defined already (US Civil War, WW2, Vietnam, etc.).
The characters are an uninteresting cast. Geiger is the archetypical sympathetic hero who’s all about saving his family (yawn) and is seemingly invincible when he turns into the glowing skeleton (double yawn) whose powers are vague at best. The villains are all one-dimensional (motivation: powah!) and the kids are average kid characters (ie. dull innocents). Nobody really stands out as particularly memorable.
Johns is like McDonald’s: it’s popular because it’s the same sort of thing every time, it’s easily consumed, easily digested and easily forgotten. If you’ve liked Johns’ previous books, you’ll probably like Geiger because it’s just more of that. The story flows effortlessly, it’s fast-paced, it looks pretty, and then it’s over. It won’t challenge you or show you anything you haven’t seen before in pop culture.
But for readers like me who were hoping to see a more interesting, subversive side to Johns and Frank away from corporate-controlled characters, you’ll be disappointed because they don’t do anything really different or creative than what you’ve seen them do at DC. As a result, Geiger, Volume 1 is a safely bland, generic and unimpressive superhero comic, sure to be a bestseller and adapted to a streaming service soon!
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