The first three "Ghost Machine" issues hit the stands today, the reason I took a dive into the Geiger back catalogue a few weeks ago. How'd it go? Let's see!
Geiger #1: Interestingly enough, Johns doesn't really build too much of a bridge to new readers here, which is a welcome development in my book. That said, he doesn't make the story inaccessible to them, either. Instead,Geiger turns a page and leaves Vegas. Besides Barney, his only reminder of his time there is the former Nuclear Knight from "Ghost Machine" #1, who remains on his trail. But we'll get there.
A group of toughs arrive in a town that looks like the Old West except for its crooked McDonalds sign. Henry, the town's elderly mayor, tells the thugs that the town's citizens have given them everything they could. In response, the lead thug hits Henry in the face with the butt of his shotgun. He then orders the other thugs to "show them there is no line we won't cross" and screams at them to "hurt the weak" and get the kids.
As a thug on horseback grabs a kid, the lead thug approaches Geiger, who's sitting on a bench reading "Blood Meridian." Unwisely, the lead thug knocks it from Geiger's hands.
We then fast forward to the thugs lying in the street, one with Geiger's handprint dramatically burned into his face. The remaining thug threatens to murder a young boy unless Geiger lets him leave. Geiger suddenly imagines his son where the boy is and hurls one of his rods straight through the guy's skull.
As the townspeople worry about Geiger getting them sick, Henry goes to talk to him, telling him they didn't realize he was the Glowing Man when he arrived the previous night looking for the library. Picking up his book, Geiger silently leaves, though we see the smiling Knight watching from behind a post.
At a camp site that night, Barney is acutely displeased with their diet of canned beans, though Geiger tells him that he'll get sick again if he eats anything else, even with his radioactive stomach. The next morning, the Knight arrives at the abandoned camp site, though it turns out Geiger is still there when he throws the Knight to the ground, telling him to stop following him. The Knight tells Geiger that he's helping him, that the Army is following him by tracking his rods' radioactive trail and that he blew up some toxic waste to throw the Army off Geiger's trail.
Under pressure from Geiger, the Knight admits that he wants to be a hero like Geiger. He admits that he terrible things when he worked for the King of Vegas, because he was scared. You can tell it haunts him, as he tells Geiger that he laughed at the pain of the people smaller than him, people that he hurt. But he notices that Geiger is never scared. He watched him stand between the King and two kids Geiger didn't know (in "Geiger (2021)" #6), and the Knight wants to believe that the world is more than toxicity. "I'm tired of being an awful human being in an awful world." Fair enough, dude.
Before they can finish, the Army arrives. They aim a bomb at the pair, and the Knight takes on the soldiers as one of them notes the president didn't tell them to bring in Geiger alive. Before a soldier can kill the Knight, Barney stops him and Geiger enters the fray.
In the aftermath, the Knight once again (as he did in "Ghost Machine" #1) tells Geiger about rumors of a guy who was cured of the same problem Geiger has. But Geiger tells the Knight that he *is* the cancer, that "nothing good survives in this world."
Later, as he braves a strong sand storm, Geiger sees a dandelion amazingly growing in such a harsh environment and remembers his vow renewal ceremony, where his little girl wore a dandelion behind her ear. (You guys, as a dad, I have a really hard time every time we get a flashback to Geiger's past.)
He then stumbles upon the Knight, who's taken off his armor, ready to fall on his sword, literally. Instead Geiger saves him. The Knight tells Geiger that he made a good point about the pointlessness of the world, so he decided to commit suicide. Geiger tells him that he meant that he should return to Vegas, not commit seppuku. The Knight tells him that he doesn't have a home and asks why he should wander with no purpose. Geiger tells the Knight that they might as well try to find this guy who was cured, and the Knight introduces himself as Nate.
The issue ends with a man in an Army jeep examining the dandelion and then using powers to electrocute it, announcing, "I'm close." Dun-dun-DUN!
Redcoat #1: As opposed to "Geiger," we haven't really had a deep dive into Simon, so Johns delivers one to us here. It's, ah, not a pretty picture.
We begin with John Hancock using "magicks of the Founding Fathers" to rescue Paul Revere from some Redcoats and then segue to Simon fleeing U.S. troops in Trenton on Christmas Day, 1776. Simon notes the British government paid most soldiers to be there and, ironically, the British officers paid the government to be there. In other words, it isn't the most inspired team.
Simon manages to escape the pursuing soldiers and spends the night in a church's loft. Around midnight, he awakens to voices in the sanctuary. Below him, Benjamin Franklin lies naked on a stone tablet (yeah, it's an image) with six red-hooded, robed men surrounding him. One of the men warns Ben of the consequences if he isn't found worthy, and Ben accepts them. As the Grand Architect hoists a ram's skull and begins the spell, Simon falls from the loft. He's hit with blue light from the skull, and one of the men tells the other men to leave as he recognizes Simon isn't worthy. The church then explodes, and Simon informs us that he woke up the next morning and left.
In 1892, Simon awakens again, this time with three men at the door of the room he's renting at an inn, seeking vengeance for killing family and friends. He flees to a pub where he begs his ex-girlfriend, Betsy (Ross?) to help him, but she lights a lantern in the window to alert the men he's there since they offered to pay off Simon's (fairly large) tab. They succeed in killing him. Later, a young Albert Einstein (yes) awakens Simon while exhuming him. Einstein is thrilled to find him, because he needs help to stop a Great Evil. But a group of red-robed men appear before he can explain more.
I'm not sure I'm going to hang in there all the way with "Redcoat." Simon is funny, but he's remarkably unlikeable. But the premise is intriguing, particularly since Einstein's "Great Evil" is clearly the one mentioned in the Unnamed timeline that comes at the end of each issue. So I'll hang in here a while to see where Johns goes.
Rook: Exodus #1: Holy shit, this issue!
Our introduction to Rook and Exodus came in "Ghost Machine" #1, where Johns walked us through the status quo on the eve of the War of the Wardens. This issue goes well beyond an introduction, giving us a world-building tour de force.
In 2152, the Better-World Corporation purchased Planet "F" in the Kepler system, renaming it Exodus the following year and colonizing it in 2159. The Earth Engine failed in 2170, though, prompting evacuations in 2171. As we saw in "Ghost Machine" #1, Rook is working on a rocket to escape Exodus and is trying to convince the only other Warden he trusts, Swine, to come with him.
One thing I didn't quite realize - and I'm thrilled to see - is how dystopian of a story Johns and Fabok are telling. Initially, I thought Exodus was just a world providing agricultural resources to Earth, so Better-World didn't bother coming to save its workers there. Instead, it's clear that Rook and his companions were providing these resources to the wealthy people who fled "pollution, poverty, or overpopulation" on Earth for Exodus. Once they evacuated the (paying) residents, Better-World promised to return for the employees...and didn't. I thought it was bad; it's even worse (or 2024, take your pick).
Three years after the Engine failed, in 2173, Rook begins his narration. The issue begins with a rocket blasting into space and exploding, and Rook exposited that his best guess is that only 1-in-50 rockets manage to leave the atmosphere. It doesn't stop the parade of ships "made from scrap metal and super glue" trying to make it. Rook explains that no one knows why the Engine stopped working, but, now that it has, Exodus' climate is reverting and the water is disappearing.
Rook's activity begins at the crash site, and he taps into his helmet's neural network to contact Swine for help looking for spare parts. When Rook reaches him, Swine tells Rook that he's several days away, looting a ship with booze that "Pumba" (clearly his favorite hog) found. Rook is frustrated, because he needs the pigs to find the parts he needs. Rook then realizes the rocket's pilot, called a Weatherman, survived, though he's impaled on a stake. Though Weathermen looked down on Wardens, Rook tries to help him by giving him his last pack of painkillers, a sign that this place hasn't stripped Rook of his humanity even if he's tough. Instead, the pilot hands him a manila envelope and tells Rook, "Don't let them burn." The pilot dies, and Rook has to tell the crows not to eat him. We hear of "instinct influence"for the first time here, which is the unplanned phenomenon whereby the creatures's (here, the crows') desires push into the Warden's mind (instead of vice versa).
Suddenly, an enormous bear arrives on the scene and attacks Rook. He exposits that, once the Engine went offline, the predators started to grow larger. Was it a genetic mutation that the artificial water caused? Was it an "imperceptible difference in planet size compared to Earth"? No one knew (again). At any rate, Rook takes on the bear as the crows hilariously encourage him to fly to safety. He manages to get the crows to attack the bear, piercing its eye and sending it running.
Rook buries the pilot (before the birds can eat the corpse) and enters his vehicle, which looks like the Tumbler from "Batman Begins." (It's an apt comparison because, when we later see his face, Rook looks a lot like Bruce Wayne.) Rook picks up a flopping fish in a drying river bed and then heads to a dilapidated dome. Rook exposits that New Mason had a population of 800,000 people with every amenity a family could want, but, as he enters the destroyed city, it's now just him. As he arrives at the rocket he's building, he exposits that it'll soon be no one.
At home, Rook takes off his helmet to get a break from the birds, and we see his handsome, scarred face. He roasts the fish but unfortunately finishes off his booze, the only thing that really quiets the birds' voices. He heads into one of the city's various bird-named apartment buildings in search of supplies. He walks down a hall of doors marked with Xs (323, 325,...) and enters 333.
Upon taking its booze, he crosses off the door and heads to the movie theater, which we previously heard the automated voice advertise. ("And don't fuh-fuh-forget it's family muh-movie night in the entertainment district!"). After the movie ends, he opens the envelope the pilot handed him, where he finds a photo of the man and his family. Rook wonders if the man's family was still on Exodus or if they ever came to Exodus in the first place. He puts away the photo.
We watch days, maybe weeks pass, as the birds' voices in his head get louder and he makes his way to door 811. Meanwhile, the riverbed where he was getting fish is dry, and he exposits that the crows, who are also hungry, are loyal only to the helmet.
Later, Swine and his pigs arrive. Swine notes how rough Rook looks, and Rook is pissed, explaining that it's harder for him to find parts now that he needs specific ones. (Previously, he needed everything so could find them on his own.) Ominously, Swine observes that his poorly behaved pigs are getting harder to control when they're hungry. Swine comments that there's something wrong with the neural network, like something is interfering with it. Rook thinks that it's the failing planet and tells Swine that he can't just wander for supplies in their waning days. Swine then reemphasizes that he's not leaving Exodus and his drift. Rook calls him a fool, that the pigs'll turn on him once the helmet fails, but agrees to put aside the worry and get drunk with Swine like they did in training.
That night, Rook comes home drunk and works on the rocket, falling to the ground. He recalls his childhood in 2148 Bloomington, Illinois, working on his family's farm. He proudly builds a scarecrow only for some crows to perch on it. He then watches in amazement as a fleet of spaceships speed into the sky. Inside, Rook's father watches TV, and the reporters provide a litany of crises: the West Coast is uninhabitable after wild fires, the New Madrid fault line has its strongest earthquake in centuries, homelessness has hit 33 percent, a media blackout obscures a pandemic in New Pyongyang, Alexandria is flooded, and the Bank of England has collapsed. They then watch an ad for Better-World, and Rook asks his dad what it all means. His (hot AF) dad tells him that everyone who can is leaving, but they're not "running away."
Fifteen years later, Rook finds the farm in flames. Later, an adjustor tells him that his father deliberately set the fire, but Rook refutes that. The adjustor notes the land'll make an optimal port and, for the right commission, he won't report it as arson. It's pretty clear Better-World set the fire, but Rook has little choice to accept its compensation offer to put him to the top of the relocation line. As he boards the ship for the 13+ month trip to Exodus, Rook sees a homeless man with a child next to him with a sign that says, "Don't forget us." Oof.
In the present, a crow awakens him, and Rook decides they need to leave today. He looks for Swine only to find some of his hogs eviscerated. We then see Swine fleeing with Pumba and the rest of the drift from a group of the super-sized bears. A bear smashes Swine into the ground, and, as Swine reaches for his rifle, a voice tells him that his spine is broken. A hand then rips off his mask, and an enormous Warden - presumably the Ursaw of next issue's title - says, "And your skull crushed."
You guys, this series is 100% going to become a movie franchise, and we're all going to be thankful for it. I love everything about it. The characters are great, the world-building spectacular, the vibe pressing. I can't recommend it enough.
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