You should read
Geiger by Geoff
Johns and Gary Frank,
for those of you that don't know.
My name is G.I.
Joel, and I love comic books so much
that I left a full time job
to open a comic book shop
and share my love of comics
with all of you.
And every Monday,
I do episode like this
where I tell you a comic book
that you should read
because I think it's fantastic
and that you'll love it.
But let's go ahead and first
get into my spoiler
free review of this great book, Geiger.
Simply put,
Geiger is a story of a man named
Tyriq Geiger and the lengths
that he is willing to go
to protect his family
set in the year 2050, 20 years after
the world has been destroyed
by nuclear bombs.
The survivors
exist in different factions
spread across the U.S.
This story primarily takes place
in what remains of Las Vegas
and its surrounding desert,
but Tyriq lives outside
the walls of Vegas.
Unlike the other survivors,
he has no need for a radiation suit.
He has become an urban legend
that goes by many names like Joe Glow,
the Man of Mass Destruction,
or the glowing man.
Tariq spends his days
protecting the fallout shelter.
His family is locked away
and waiting for the day.
It's safe for them to come out
and Tyriq
does his absolute
best to keep trouble out of his own
little corner of the world.
But trouble has a way of finding him.
So that's just kind of a basic synopsis
of this book.
You know,
like I said, it's
a dystopian future fallout type world,
and you know, it follows
a main character, Tyriq Geiger,
who pretty much goes by Geiger
most of the time.
But I don't want to get
too much more into it
because I don't want
to spoil any of the twists
or turns that the story takes
as you kind of read through it.
Now I've said before
across different videos
on my different platforms,
I am not a huge Geoff Johns fan,
but even with that said,
I actually enjoyed this book quite a bit.
I'm a big fan of like the dystopian
nuclear wasteland type futuristic world.
I think those stories are a lot of fun.
You know, we get a lot of them and,
you know, it's
hard to get a unique spin on them
or to really get into
something different.
But we don't typically
get those same stories
with a superhero aspect.
So Geiger is a superhero
in every sense of the word, right?
He has superpowers.
He has these rods
that are like cooling rods
and he pulls them out of his back.
He basically turns into a nuclear reactor
type bomb,
and he just is filled with energy
and power.
He's a superhero in the sense
that he has like superpowers,
and Johns
did a really great job of world
building throughout this story.
You know,
kind of
exploring the different factions
and the different groups
that exist
in this dystopian world
now within the walls of Las Vegas.
There are the casinos
in each
one of those casinos is like
its own little city state.
And then outside of Las Vegas,
we have other groups
like the organ people
or what's left of the U.S. government.
You also introduced
some pretty cool creatures
like night crawlers
and other weird radioactive
two headed wolves.
And another thing that he does,
and it's pretty obvious throughout
the story,
is we're being told
this story as though it is another story.
We're sitting here on a campfire
and we're talking about Geiger.
That's kind of the premise of this book,
and he does this
great job of making Geiger
at least the person of Geiger, similar
to like a Paul Bunyan or a John Henry
kind of an American myth.
I think what he's trying to say
is that even in a dystopian world,
even where there is little hope
and we're fighting for our survival
on a daily basis,
humans will still tell stories
at the end of the day,
regardless of what we're going through.
Storytelling is a part of who we are,
and I think that's what the message
he's trying to get across.
And he does a great job
of kind of aligning himself
with the American myth
and the classic,
you know, Western Frontier story
and turning that
into more of a dystopian post-apocalyptic
nuclear fallout.
American Frontier Story.
And it's,
you know,
like a great combination of Mad Max,
Fallout game
series and Book of Eli
all kind of crammed into one thing.
We have this heroic character
who is kind of a myth more than a man.
You know,
we have the cars
and all the crazy vehicles
and the different factions
kind of chasing them across the desert.
So it's a lot of fun in the sense
that it's a lot of those things
kind of put together.
So if you're a fan
of any of those properties,
any of those franchises,
you're really going to enjoy this one.
But the thing I think I enjoyed
the most was overall
just the sense of the importance
of storytelling, right?
How important it is
for us as humans
to tell stories about the world
around us, to help us understand it,
to help us move through it.
And I think he does a great job
of kind of showing
what that would look like
in a post-apocalyptic future, right?
We would continue to tell stories.
We would continue to be humans,
even in a world where
there is very little left of humanity.
We would still continue
some of these basic things,
like telling stories.
And when it comes to the art in this one,
I mean, it's Garry Frank.
I really don't think
I need to say much more than it's Garry
Frank doing the artwork.
It is just absolutely fantastic
from beginning to end,
you know, it's got a lot of detail.
It's very eye-catching.
It's just classic Garry Frank artwork.
But like I said, overall,
this is a great read,
especially if you're a fan of
like futuristic, dystopian stories
but want to see like a superhero
twist on it.
It's a definitely
a mix of,
like I said, Fallout Book of Eli
Mad Max,
you know,
maybe even Waterworld a little bit.
But if you were to mix
those things together,
what would it look like?
It would be Geiger.
If you're interested in reading Geiger,
you can actually shop it at the link
down below at GTX Comics.com,
but have you read Geiger?
Are you planning on reading it?
Let me know down in the comments.
I would love for a chance
to connect with you.
Be sure to hit that subscribe
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or episodes, and I'll see you later.