Geiger #19 // Review
There’s a. redheaded girl who is about to be sold. THey’re asking for. lot for her. Ten ARs and 300 rounds of ammo. That’s a hell of a lot for a single girl, bt she’s young and she’s. got natural rd hair. They’re rare. So it makes sense that they’d be asking for the kind of price that they’re asking for. He takes her into a restroom to test the merchandise. Doesn’t get far before there’s noise outside. Then a glowing green woman breaks down the door demanding that the gentleman shot her. Things are about to get real in Geiger #19. Writer Geoff Johns delivers one of the single best issues of the series thus far in a one-shot story drawn by Gary Frank. Color comes to the page courtesy of Brad Anderson.
The glowing woman asks gain. She asks the man to shoot her. He does. It’s not like there’s any way out of the room that isn’t through her anyway. And if he’s thinking anything at all, he knows that he probably isn’t going to make it out of the room alive. He empties his clip. She’s satisfied that he’s not going to threaten to kill the girl if she coms any closer. Others have when she’s put. them in the place he’s in now. The girl is terrified as she sees the man incinerated by the green glow. The glowing woman isn’t exactly concerned about that. She wants her to live. Se wants to teach her ow to survive.
The Glowing Woman is a much more powerful statement about survival than anything that Johns came-up with for the title character. It’s not often that a title character just...completely fails to show-up in their own title. It. can be frustrating. Here it’s actually a relief. The Glowing Woman is such a powerful statement on the nature of human survival. The fact that she’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland hero only makes her that much more of a badass. The story that Johns delivers for her is that much more intense than anything that he’s come-u p wit h for Tariq Geiger.
Frank’s attention to detail sells the power of Johns’ story. There’s a sharp sense of intensity in everything that makes it across the page. The clasy, old Ghost Rider-inspired visual appeal of the character is augmented by some very clever framing and pacing.Frank always manages to find the right angle with artwork that always feels more or less precisely sculpted to the script. Anderson’s colors cling to all the spaces between the darkness...creating a shadowy radiance that illuminates the page with a deliciously unstable energy.
Okay...so...can we have a Glowing Woman title already? She’s got a strength and power about her that would feel that much more poignant than the traditional Mad Max-style story that Geiger is trying to develop for the page. It’s really too bad that Johns didn’t simply introduce her first. She’s got a great deal more energy and power than Geiger.
