Geiger #13 // Review
Ashley is on the run. They’re after her, but she’s pretty good at evading them in the night. Hunger is GOING to set-in, though. They’ll be there waiting for her at an old Kroger when she rushes into a stash of potato chips. That’s when they spring-up to attack. That’s when she starts glowing green. Maybe they should have left her alone in Geiger #13. Writer Geoff Johns continues a post-apocalyptic drama with artist Gary Frank and colorist Brad Anderson. The pulpy post-apocalyptic adventures continue in a relatively fun chapter of Johns and Frank’s ongoing series.
Elsewhere, Junkyard Joe is giving Geiger’s two-headed dog a bath. Geiger is impressed. The dog would never let Geiger even try anything like that. The cybernetic soldier has his own kind of grace, though. He may not be able to say anything, but he’s got some very deft skill in the right places when it becomes necessary. Geiger has problems to deal with, though. The glowing woman is approaching the Lewistown--the small community that Geiger is occupying. She’s bringing danger with her as she’s being pursued by some pretty heavy armaments. To make matters worse...there’s a nuclear warhead in a silo underneath Lewsitown.
Johns is juggling a lot of different elements in the latest issue. Geiger himself is just one element in his own title for at least one issue. And while none of it is particularly satisfying, everything that’s going on in the issue has the kind of momentum it needs to maintain an entertaining look into a pulpy after-the-bomb sort of a superhero story. Johns’ work lacks the depth of theme that is the hallmark of some of the better post-apocalyptic sci-fi from the 20th century, but it’s still a lot of fun.
Once again--Frank and Anderson do a phenomenal job of giving Geiger’s world a strong sense of its own reality. The detail that Frank renders into the face of the title character and everyone else amps-up the drama while the immersive detail in the background feels profoundly desolate in just the right way. Once again Andesron’s color pallete is breathtakingly bleak...allowing that sickly radiant green of the Glowing Woman to completely dominate the visuals in its own way. The visuals of the series do a remarkably good job of selling the presence of a series which does such a good job of fusing after-the-bomb sci-fi with something more akin to the standard comic book superhero genre.
The overall run of Johns’ work on The Unnamed family of titles has been incredibly ambitious. Johns has been able to carve out a very specific and specifically novel territory for a comic book universe that feels quite fresh and interesting. It’s not like Johns is doing anything terribly deep or challenging, but it’s pretty admirable to see him finding a new niche for a multi-title project. It’s impressive to see it continuing as far as it has.
