Geiger #18

History

Geiger is a creator-owned property by writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank — the same partnership behind Doomsday Clock and Batman: Earth One at DC — marking their first independent creator-owned series at Image Comics. The ongoing second volume launched in April 2024 under the Ghost Machine imprint, a creator-owned cooperative announced at New York Comic Con in October 2023, in which all founding creators jointly own and operate the company and share in publishing, media, and licensing revenues. For issue #18, regular penciller Gary Frank handed interior art duties to Eduardo Pansica and inker Norm Rapmund, with Brad Anderson continuing as colorist and Rob Leigh as letterer, a creative division that had been deployed on alternating arcs throughout the volume. The series exists within 'The Unnamed,' Ghost Machine's shared post-nuclear universe that also encompasses Redcoat and Junkyard Joe.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published November 26, 2025 by Image Comics / Ghost Machine; written by Geoff Johns, interior art by Eduardo Pansica and Norm Rapmund, colors by Brad Anderson, letters by Rob Leigh.
• Serves as the conclusion of the Coldwater Prison arc: Tariq Geiger has been stripped of his powers and sentenced to death inside a high-security penitentiary run by its own inmates, with the central dramatic question posed as 'CAN GEIGER DIE?'
• Plot specifics include Geiger being tortured in an electric chair and interrogated over the location of a prisoner warlord named Goldbeard's supposed treasure — which turns out to be a baseball glove and a drawing of Goldbeard's deceased son, not a material fortune.
• Geiger escapes the prison with his powers critically destabilized and near-uncontrollable, with President Griffin tracking him out of fear that Geiger could one day trigger a second apocalypse.
• The issue directly bridges to the re-entry of Ashley Arden (the Glowing Woman), whose full first appearance had taken place in Geiger #10 (January 2025) and whose story arc converges with Geiger's in issues immediately following #18.
• Gary Frank contributed a Youngblood Team-Up variant cover (and a black-and-white virgin variant) as part of Image Comics' publisher-wide November 2025 Youngblood celebration tied to the return of Rob Liefeld's Youngblood; additional variants were provided by Kyle Hotz and Lesley 'Leirix' Li.
• The issue is part of the material collected in Geiger Vol. 5 TPB, which spans issues #16–23 of the second volume.
• Geiger as a property has an announced television adaptation in development at Paramount Television Studios, with Johns serving as showrunner and Justin Simien as co-executive producer, announced in October 2022.

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Variants (1)