Geiger #12
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeGeiger #12 marks the one-year anniversary of the Ghost Machine/Image ongoing series and serves as the narrative payoff to the multi-issue build toward the Glowing Woman character, Ashley 'Ash' Arden, who had her first appearance just two issues earlier in #10. As the first-year finale, the issue crystallizes the central dramatic question of the entire series — whether Tariq Geiger can ever truly control his radioactive condition — by staging a training session that goes catastrophically wrong and climaxes with a full nuclear meltdown showdown between the two Glowing characters. The closing-page revelation that Ash has been secretly holding Doctor Molotov captive reframes her as an ambiguous, potentially antagonistic figure and threads the ongoing mystery of the Unknown War into the next story arc, demonstrating how Johns uses annual milestones as genuine turning points rather than filler. For the Ghost Machine publishing experiment as a whole, the issue also validates the shared-universe model: Junkyard Joe and Nate the Nuclear Knight's parallel subplot about the Unknown War keeps multiple titles in conversation without requiring a crossover event.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Geiger (vol. 2) launched in April 2024 as an all-new ongoing continuation of writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank's original 2021 Image Comics miniseries, their first creator-owned work together after years of collaboration on DC projects including Doomsday Clock. The series is published through Ghost Machine, the creator-owned collective Johns co-founded in October 2023 alongside Gary Frank, Jason Fabok, Bryan Hitch, Francis Manapul, Brad Meltzer, Peter J. Tomasi, and others, which operates as an imprint within Image Comics and gives creators full ownership of their characters. Johns has stated that the Geiger concept was deliberately inspired by the early independent, character-driven ethos of Image's founding era. The entire creative team on #12 — Johns (writer), Frank (artist), Brad Anderson (colorist), and Rob Leigh (letterer) — has been the consistent core unit throughout both volumes of the series.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published March 12, 2025 by Image Comics/Ghost Machine; written by Geoff Johns, art and Cover A by Gary Frank and Brad Anderson, lettered by Rob Leigh.
- Closes out the first year (issues #1–12) of the Geiger (2024) ongoing series, which launched in April 2024.
- Central plot: Ash Arden (The Glowing Woman) attempts to train Tariq Geiger to control his radioactive power surges without the use of boro rods, framing power control as a psychological rather than physical challenge.
- Ash Arden discloses her origin to Tariq: she survived a nuclear detonation at age three, gaining her powers, while everyone around her subsequently died of cancer caused by her own radiation.
- Issue-ending revelation: Ash is revealed to be secretly imprisoning Doctor Molotov, a character whose ties to both Geiger's and Ash's transformations have been a running mystery in the series.
- Parallel subplot continues Junkyard Joe and Nate the Nuclear Knight's ongoing investigation into the secrets of the Unknown War.
- Three cover variants were solicited: Cover A (Gary Frank & Brad Anderson), Cover B (Martín Morazzo & Chris O'Halloran), and Cover C (Gary Frank & Anderson wraparound design variant).
- The Geiger series as a whole has been optioned for television: a TV adaptation is in development at Paramount Television Studios, with Johns set to write the pilot and serve as showrunner alongside director-producer Justin Simien (Dear White People).
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Reprinted in Ghost Machine: The Official Guidebook #1 (2026)
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