In a somewhat surprising change of venue, Geoff Johns and Image Comics just announced that Image would be publishing Johns’ newest comic story, Geiger, instead of his usual publisher, DC. Geiger, a post-apocalyptic science-fiction/horror epic, will be presented by the same creative team that produced Johns’ popular Doomsday Clock limited series - artist Gary Frank and colorist Brad Anderson - both longtime mainstays at DC. Johns had stated previously that he had a series in the works with Frank expected to be published by DC under Johns’ Killing Zone imprint. This will be only the second time in Johns’ long career that he has published anything with Image Comics, the first being a single issue of Witchblade, which was released in 2003.
Johns had previously served as the chief creative officer for DC Entertainment from 2010 to 2018 and as president from 2016 to 2018. Even after his stepping down from these roles, Johns has continued to work as a writer and producer for the company, tackling such high-profile endeavors as their new Stargirl television series and the upcoming film Wonder Woman 1984. Johns has also continued to write comics for DC, including the recent Black Label miniseries, Batman: Three Jokers.
However close their relationship might be, Johns, Frank and Image Comics Publisher and Chief Creative Officer Frank Stephenson confirmed today that the new series would be published through Image in an exclusive feature from BleedingCool.com. Stephenson said his company was elated by the opportunity to work with Johns and Frank. "There are few writers in modern comics whose names carry the same weight as Geoff's, and Gary has been one of the industry's best artists over two decades,” Stephenson said, “so it's been difficult to contain the excitement we all have over working with them on this incredible new series."
Geiger, named after the Geiger-counter device that measures airborne radioactivity and was developed in 1928 by Hans Geiger and Walther Müller, will follow a mysterious survivor in a radioactive wasteland fought over by scavengers and criminals in a Mad Max-esque post-apocalyptic world. Johns said that he hoped the series would follow a similar thematic tone of the early, iconoclastic stories from the founding days of Image in 1992, such as Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon and Todd McFarlane’s Spawn.
Considering the amount of work on their properties he's done and the success that Johns has seen in recent years in terms of the sales of his books for DC - with Publisher Jim Lee even touting the monumentally high sales of Three Jokers in a recent interview - it is hard to say why DC would decline the offer to publish a series with such a top grade creative team. Johns has come under fire recently for his alleged mistreatment of Justice League cast member Ray Fisher, and has already survived a series of firings aimed at the creative team behind the lackluster DC Expanded Universe film franchise. While Johns has seemingly managed to avoid negative repercussions from these instances for now, it is possible that this is the first sign that DC could be considering moving on from their best-selling writer.
Geoff Johns' Geiger is set to go on sale from Image Comics in April 2021 wherever comic books are sold.
Source: BleedingCool.com