Comic Book / The Unnamed

aka: Geiger

"America has always been at war."

The Unnamed is the collective title for a comic book Shared Universe created and written by Geoff Johns, primarily illustrated by Gary Frank, and published by Image Comics. The series is made up of various miniseries that, while superficially independent, come together to tell a larger story.

Throughout history unlikely and strange heroes have risen and fallen. These men and women are a mystery, their identities and lives a secret. But for a great evil to be stopped, their stories must be told.

They are the Unnamed, fighting the Unknown War.

Works in the The Unnamed series:

• Geiger: The story of a man who becomes a nuclear-powered folk legend following a nuclear apocalypse. A six issue miniseries.
  • Geiger 80 Page Giant: A supersized special anthology issue telling various stories throughout the Wasteland.
  • Ground Zero: A two part Origins Episode depicting Geiger's initial months after the apocalypse and the journey of a group of militiamen who seek to kill him.
• Junkyard Joe: A Robot Soldier built to fight in The Vietnam War tries to become something more than a killer by tracking down its old squadmate. A six issue miniseries.
• The Blizzard: A prison transport crashes in a blizzard while driving through the Rocky Mountains, and the men inside must survive against a monster that seeks to consume them. A twelve part story originally published in the "IMAGE! 30th Anniversary Anthology", then rereleased as an independent TPB.
• Redcoat: A British spy fighting in The Revolutionary War discovers that he's been transformed into an undying immortal by an occult ritual. A six issue miniseries.
• First Ghost: A supernatural story set in the White House.

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The Unnamed contains examples of these tropes:

General Tropes

• Anachronic Order: The stories of the Unnamed are released out of chronological order, jumping up and down the larger timeline.
• Central Theme: War and its effects on people and history, as well as learning to move past our trauma.
• Genre Roulette: Every entry in the series plays to a different genre. Geiger is post-apocalyptic science fiction, Junkyard Joe homages war dramas, The Blizzard tells a Folk Horror story, etc..
• Hero of Another Story: The various Unnamed regularly appear in one another's stories, either as cameos or supporting characters, but rarely playing a direct role.
• Hyperlink Story: The gimmick of the series. Each story can be read as its own independent plot, but they intersect and connect to tell an overarching narrative and build a larger world.
• Immortality: The unifying theme of the Unnamed's powers is that they are all biologically immortal in some way, shape, or form.
• Like Reality, Unless Noted: The setting starts this way, right up til a nuclear war breaking out in 2030 sends everything flying off the rails.
• Myth Arc: The Unnamed coming together across time and space to defeat the Great Evil.
• War Is Hell: Each of the Unnamed is tied to a major war in American history, and each of them is confronted with all the horrors war brings. Junkyard Joe goes especially hard on this.

Geiger

• 0% Approval Rating: The King is so rightfully hated by everyone in Vegas that not only do his forces slowly turn on and abandon him, but when Geiger kills him, literally everybody is happy to see him go and even his own mother apologizes for what a little shit he was.
• After the End: In 2030, the Unknown War erupts and the world is destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Geiger's story picks up twenty years after.
• Ambiguous Situation: One flashback shows Tariq's Jerkass neighbors asking about his shelter while visiting a barbecue he was hosting. It's left ambiguous if their later savage attempt to steal the shelter was a spur of the moment decision or something they had been planning just in case nukes began flying.
• Asshole Victim: Tariq's racist asshole neighbors who cause him to become Geiger by shooting him and his dog before they can get into the bomb shelter earn no sympathy when they resultantly get nuked right alongside him. He lives. They don't.
• The Atoner: Molotov is consumed with guilt over his involvement in designing the nukes that ended the world, feeding in to his desperation to rescue his wife, who he sees as the one good thing he's been involved with in the world.
• Bait-and-Switch: Joe's flashback of a man saying "Joe, that you?" after being defeated by Geiger, plus the way the military talk about his creator all suggests that the man in Joe's vision is said creator. He's not. He's Muddy Davis, the guy who wrote the comic strips based on Joe.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Salt and the King both want to hunt down Geiger to fight and kill him for various reasons. They both get their wish of a fight… and both learn the hard way just how outmatched they are.
• Bullying the Dragon: The King keeps hunting and harassing Geiger despite repeated and clear demonstrations that the Glowing Man is far too strong for him and his forces, ranging from killing people sent after him to personally scarring the King's face.
• The Caligula: The King of Vegas, the Spoiled Brat son of the original king who has turned Las Vegas into a dystopian Vice City and seeks to kill Geiger to stroke his ego.
• Commonality Connection: Geiger certainly tries to strike one up with Junkyard Joe on the basis of both being powered by radiation, but Joe isn't especially talkative.
• Continuity Nod: The milita that Molotov travels with in Ground Zero are heavily implied to be the same one the scientist and his goons from Junkyard Joe are tied to.
• Crystal-Ball Scheduling: The first issue features a series of news broadcasts reporting on various strange current events in the lead-up to the Unknown War. Each one foreshadows the various Unnamed who will appear over the course of the wider series… and then the newscasts get interrupted by the announcement that nukes are in the air.
• Defector from Commie Land: Molotov, a Russian scientist who helped develop their nuclear arsenal only to defect to the United States, implicitly because he wasn't working for the Russian government willingly.
• Fallout Shelter Fail: Prior to the nuclear war, Tariq and his family built an elaborate and expensive fallout shelter behind their house. Tariq manages to get his wife and children inside before the bombs drop, but fails to make it himself. He spends the next twenty years hoping that his family is safe in the shelter. They're not, having been dead for many years, probably since the moment the bombs fell. An example that is absolutely not Played for Laughs.
• Genius Bruiser: Geiger is a scientist and a thinker as much as he is a particularly brutal fighter who puts his Super-Strength to full use.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Tariq learns the hard way that his powers let him survive exploding with the force of a low-yield nuclear bomb.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Geiger's two-headed mutant wolf companion Barney accompanies him on his adventures, and Tariq is shown to have been a bit of an Animal Lover even before the apocalypse.
• Logical Weakness: Tariq's radiation powers do a lot less good against the nuclear-powered robot Junkyard Joe than they do against humans… but a machine can be overloaded, so Tariq just keeps feeding Joe energy until he shorts out.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Radiation-Induced Superpowers are common in superhero comics, so the reader probably won't question the Hollywood Science of Tariq becoming a radioactive skeleton man after being caught in nuclear fallout, until the comic itself points out that radiation does not work that way, with everyone other than Tariq just suffering realistic poisoning when overexposed to it. Furthermore, it's revealed that prior to the apocalypse, Tariq had cancer… a bizarre, unique form of bone cancer his doctors couldn't understand, which didn't impair his ability to function in any way. He was also undergoing an unusual and experimental treatment for said cancer, but the story never elaborates on it. Molotov at one point wonders if he's some of supernatural being, created by God or the Devil or something to punish sinners in the wastes, or perhaps to heal them since he purifies the land he passes through of radiation. All in all, the story raises a lot of questions and theories about the possible nature and origins of Tariq's powers, but never answers them, leaving it to the reader's interpretation.
• The Millstone: Roy to Salt's militia, as his paranoia and desperate need for somebody to blame over the war leads to him antagonizing and threatening Molotov, the man the team relies on to find and understand how to fight Geiger.
• Moving Beyond Bereavement: The crux of Geiger's character arc. He knows intellectually that his family probably (definitely) died in the war, but is unable to confront his feelings of grief and bereavement nor make himself move on with his life, so he wastes his days lurking around the ruins of his old neighborhood, waiting in vain for them to exit the shelter. The events of the series see him not only come to terms with their deaths, but find a new family in the form of Hailee and Henry.
• Not So Above It All: One of the first hints of Tariq's Character Development is when he lets his guard down enough to actually crack a smile at Hailee and Henry's teasing him over calling his wolf Barney.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Tariq's very adequate response to finding out Joe is immune to his powers.
  "Shit."
  • Geiger casually melting a jeep with his bare hands is enough to inspire a Mass "Oh, Crap!" in most of the King's remaining henchmen, who proceed to flee and leave their "boss" to his fate.
• The Old Country: Snarked about and subverted. Tariq needles his racist neighbors by making a comment about learning something in "the old country" before noting that he means Detroit, not whatever random Middle Eastern country they think he's from (he's American).
• Origins Episode: Ground Zero and the 80 Page Giant both serve as this, filling in a bit more of the backstory of Geiger and Vegas.
• Parental Substitute: Geiger comes to be a surrogate father figure to orphans Hailee and Henry, defending them against the dangers of the waste and fighting to provide a future for them.
• Phlebotinum Overload: Tariq being a living nuclear reactor means that he can go into meltdown if he gets too juiced up, a process he staves off using cooling rods he invented. When they get broken in the fight with Junkyard Joe, he manages to hold back exploding for days out of Heroic Willpower until he's gotten Henry, Hailee, and Barney to safety and ensured he won't hurt anyone other than himself and some bad guys.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Tariq's Jerkass neighbors who try to steal his fallout shelter for themselves destroy what little sympathy they could've received when they make a nasty crack about "his people" to the Arab-American Tariq. A flashback shows that they were casually bigoted towards him even before the apocalypse, with the husband making snide comments about Tariq liking desert heat because of his ethnicity or insinuating that he is a foreigner (he's from Detroit).
• Power Incontinence: Geiger spends his first three months after the bombs just pulling himself together, adjusting to his new body and trying to figure out how to contain his radiation powers. He eventually has to resort to creating his damping rods to quell meltdowns whenever he absorbs too much.
• Radiation-Induced Superpowers: While the exact origin of Geiger's powers is left ambiguous, the end result is clear; he's basically a living nuclear reactor.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The penultimate attempt by the King and his forces to attack Geiger begins and ends with Tariq casually obliterating one of their vehicles and everyone in it with a wave of his hand. Goldbeard observes this and quite sensibly tells the King that he can go fuck himself if he thinks Goldbeard is fighting the Glowing Man, then hightails it out of there, followed shortly by most of the King's other followers.
• Signs of the End Times: In the hours before the Unknown War, we get news reports about all sorts of weird or mundane events — some linked to the various Unnamed, some not — foreshadowing the coming destruction, like the death of a significant artist, Russian ships in the Baltic, a militia uprising in the US, the exposure of government secrets, the sudden animation of a mysterious monolith, and so on. These reports are cut short by the bombs dropping.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: While Geiger was blessed with superpowers by radioactivity like any classic superhero, he's the only one for unknown, possibly magical reasons. Everybody else has to wear hazmat suits while traversing the wastes, and those exposed to excess radiation contract illnesses like leukemia. Such as with Henry.
• Taking You with Me: Geiger, going into meltdown, makes his last moments count by making sure to detonate right next to the King and his goons. Thanks to the nature of his powers, he unexpectedly survives this. The King and company… not so much.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Tariq is transformed into Geiger via getting caught in a nuclear explosion during World War 3. It's hard to get more traumatic than that.
• Unspecified Apocalypse: The Unknown War is called that because nobody knows how it happened. The nukes just started flying one day at apparent random, with none ever learning who fired first. Roy hurls accusations about the Russians doing it at Molotov, but it's made clear this is just him flailing to find someone to blame and nobody actually knows.
• Vice City: Las Vegas has become one, ruled over by petty warlords who theme themselves around the city's various former amenities.
• Walking Wasteland: Subverted. Geiger sure seems like he'd be this, giving he's a radiation-eating skeleton monster, but it turns out that he actually lowers radiation wherever he goes, absorbing it and purifying the environment around him without posing an inherent danger to those around him (exempting self-defensive attacks from him or overloads).

Junkyard Joe

• Anyone Can Die: The first issue spends a long time developing the members of Muddy's platoon and showing them bonding with Joe. Then they walk into a Vietcong ambush and the entire crew except Joe and Muddy die in a matter of panels.
• Bait-and-Switch: The scientist and soldiers who show up hunting for Joe are wearing military attire, giving the reader the impression they've been sent by the government. While the scientist did use to work for the government and personally created Joe, he is now a terrorist seeking to use Joe as a weapon of revenge against his former employers, and the "soldiers" are just thugs he hired to help.
• Been There, Shaped History: Joe ended the Vietnam War, if only by being the last straw that convinces the US military that the kind of victory they want is impossible.
• Combat Pragmatist: Given that he's a superpowered robot, Joe generally has little reason to be concerned with things like technique and his hand-to-hand fighting style mostly seems to consist of hitting his enemies as hard as possible. When you're strong enough to pulp a human skull with one punch, you can do that.
• Cute Mute: Joe is more Ugly Cute than anything, but still. His creators evidently didn't see any reason to give him the capability of speech, forcing him to communicate through nonverbal gestures.
• Death of a Child: Joe attacks a village being used by the Vietcong, seeking revenge for the deaths of his squadmates, only to discover that there are civilians in the town when his gunfire accidentally strikes and kills a child. The horror of it scars him for life.
• Does Not Like Guns: After accidentally shooting a kid in the war, Joe develops a pathological hatred of guns.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The scientist and his goons are defeated and arrested for their crimes, while the government is persuaded to let Joe stay with Muddy, with the robot finding peace and finally moving past his trauma while surrounded by his Family of Choice.
• Entitled Bastard: The scientist who built Joe, who seems to think himself entitled to not just Joe's loyalty for building him, but the adulation of the entire world for making such a machine. And he'll kill anybody that gets between him and the fame he feels owed.
• Expy: Junkyard Joe is an obvious Shout-Out to G.I. Robot from DC Comics' old war comics.
• Gas Leak Cover Up: At the end of his tour, the government tells a recovering Muddy that there was no robot in his squad and that any belief he has to the contrary is the result of a nervous breakdown. Muddy is so traumatized by his experiences that he goes along with it, and he spends the next several decades pretending to himself that Joe was just some hallucination.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Joe goes from a simple war robot to a thinking, feeling being with a soul of his own thanks in part to the kindness and empathy shown to him by his platoon.
• He Knows Too Much: The scientist and his henchmen are willing to kill anybody who sees Junkyard Joe to keep their plans to use Joe to destroy Washington DC a secret.
• Jumping on a Grenade: Joe's robotic nature is revealed to his squad when he tackles a suicide bomber and gets his fake skin blown off by the resulting blast. Since he's a superpowered robot, he obviously suffers no ill effects beyond the loss of his disguise.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: When Joe shuts down in response to the injustices and horror of the Vietnam War, the American government bitterly accepts that there's no winning in 'Nam and ends the war.
• Lighter and Softer: In-Universe. Muddy's semi-autobiographical "Junkyard Joe" comic strip is extremely toned down from his actual experiences in 'Nam, to put it mildly.
• Only Known By His Nickname: Joe's real "name" is the designation of Unit Beta. The squad obviously doesn't know that and takes to calling him Junkyard Joe, based on him wearing Band-Aid's (whose real name is Joseph) spare uniform after his own gets ruined.
• Real After All: Muddy spends most of the decades after his tour in 'Nam led to believe that he hallucinated his memories of Joe. Than Joe shows up on his front steps.
• Reclusive Artist: In-Universe. Muddy Davis is very introverted and prone to secluding himself in his house despite his career as a newspaper comic writer. What little connection he has with the world is lost when his wife passes away and he decides to retire, and it takes Joe's return to get him to start opening up to other people again.
• Recursive Canon: Muddy tries to make sense of his experiences with Joe in Vietnam by writing a newspaper comic strip based on his platoon. Unsurprisingly, the comic is much Lighter and Softer than the real events.
• Robot Soldier: Junkyard Joe was built to fight for America in the Vietnam War. He ends up being a deconstruction of the concept, however, as he grew beyond his programming and developed sentience and sapience… and with it, the ability to suffer the human consequences of war.
• Saved by Canon: Muddy obviously has to survive this comic (and does) because the chronologically later Geiger showed a newscast that makes clear he dies of natural causes only a few days before the Unknown War in 2030.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Joe's experiences in Vietnam — particularly the deaths of the squad and him accidentally shooting a child — leave the robot suffering from what is unmistakably PTSD, prone to having panicked flashbacks at loud noises and general anxiety. Muddy is likewise shown to be deeply scarred by his time in the war, but is more functional.
• Stylistic Suck: Muddy's comics are kind of like Beetle Bailey at its most cloying. They massively undersell how horrifying Muddy's real experiences in Vietnam were.
• Tap on the Head: Averted. The scientist striking Muddy on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol not only knocks Davis unconscious, it leaves him with a nasty gash across his skull and forces paramedics to rush to his aid.
• Trauma Button: Muddy dropping a mug that shatters loudly on the floor triggers Joe's memories of gunfire in Vietnam, sending the poor robot into a brief PTSD-fueled panic attack where he lashes out at inanimate objects before Muddy is able to calm him.
• The Vietnam Vet: Joe himself and Muddy, obviously. Both are deeply scarred by their time in the jungle.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Joe gives Muddy a nonverbal and gentle one after their first trip into town, clearly wanting to know why Muddy shuns his neighbors when they're such kind people and trying to point out that Muddy's wife wouldn't want him to hide away in his house forever.

The Blizzard

• An Arm and a Leg: The monster loses its right arm in the final battle. Since it's tracking tag was on that arm, the government ends up only finding that arm and never learning that it died in the cabin explosion and spend the epilogue trying to pester Redcoat into futilely hunting and re-tagging the now-dead monster.
• Apocalyptic Log: The guards and prisoners discover a seemingly abandoned ranger cabin. Inside, they discover a strange series of notes, journals, and charts apparently left behind by agents of the Government Conspiracy who were studying the monster and it's history, including keeping detailed records of every disappearance it caused over the decades. They never find the people who were using the cabin, nor what happened to them.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Zig-zagged. Since the monster targets the guilty, many of its victims are criminals who fully have it coming… but it also attacks people guilty of far more minor and innocuous "crimes" like being an inattentive husband, meaning just as many of the victims don't.
  • Michael is being sent to prison for a murder he is objectively guilty of, but literally nobody faults him for it because the person he shot was a child-murdering Serial Killer whose victims included Michael's own son. The story even notes that in most cases like this in Real Life, Michael would be let off with a slap on the wrist at worst, and it's only due a variety of unique circumstances — such as a string of prior convictions — that he's serving time at all.
• Bittersweet Ending: Only two guards and one prisoner make it off the mountain, but those who do survive go on to happy endings; Jack goes back to work, Jimmy quits driving to focus on his family, and Boston gets exonerated and earns his freedom. Michael is dead but he takes the monster with him and is reunited with his son in the afterlife.
• Double-Meaning Title: The title refers to both the literal snowstorm that entraps the cast and the monster that accompanies it, which was historically known as "the Blizzard" by the Native Americans who lived in the region it inhabits.
• Emotion Eater: Downplayed, as the monster eats meat (and bone and skin…), but it specifically targets those guilty of harm against others and seems to be empowered by the emotions of guilt and regret. Whether the person actually feels it seems irrelevant; they just need to have done something to be guilty about and the monster's telepathic torment will do the rest.
• Endangered Species: The monster is one of the last of its kind after Redcoat hunted most of the species centuries ago. In the present, the government treats the creatures like any other endangered animal, complete with tagging them, against Redcoat's recommendation that they be exterminated fully.
• Foreshadowing: Once it's clear that the monster targets people guilty of wrongdoings, the reader will likely notice that it seems to ignore Boston, making clear he's telling the truth about being innocent.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Even with the tense atmosphere, Van Winkle stands out as the most universally hated member of the prisoners and guards alike. Not only for being an unrepentant drug dealer who targeted teenagers and yet refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing, but also for being a total Jerkass who acts unreasonably hostile and obnoxious every step of the way and makes an already difficult situation even more so, all without even deigning to contribute anything. It says a lot that even Toons, an unhinged arsonist who directly caused the deaths of teenagers himself, ends up being treated with less hostility than Van Winkle.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Blizzard monster, which looks like a shadowy, humanoid mass of claws and quills with occasional green spots that assails humans with telepathic visions of their sins.
• Immune to Bullets: The monster shrugs off bullets like they're nerf darts. Explosions, less so.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Most everyone on the bus hates Toons, due to him being an unstable arsonist who inadvertently caused the deaths of a bunch of innocent kids by burning down the school he worked at. But they end up acknowledging that they're happy he's along for the ride since his ability to make fires keeps them alive amidst the freezing blizzard.
• Karmic Death: Toons, the arsonist, ends up being accidentally burned to death.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The monster seems to base its killing methods on the severity of one's sins, being more brutal and torturous with those guilty of genuinely evil things than those who are just flawed; he kills Lance, Toons, and Van Winkle is extremely vicious manners, but Sterling, who's a mere white collar conman, gets a relatively quick and painless death, and Boston never gets attacked period due to being genuinely innocent.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The monster is noted to hunt within blizzards like the one that traps the prison transport. Whether this is because the monster has some kind of weather-manipulation powers and creates the snowstorms to isolate its prey or it just takes advantage of blizzards to hunt is unclear. Its ability to harass people with visions of their flaws and past mistakes, however, is explicitly supernatural.
• Miscarriage of Justice: Boston, one of the prisoners, insists stridently that he did not commit the murder he was indicted for and that he was framed. Nobody believes him. But he's telling the truth, and in the epilogue, is freed after DNA evidence helps find the real killer.
• Never My Fault: Van Winkle desperately insists that any overdose deaths caused by his drug dealing are not his fault because he didn't physically force the addicts he preyed on to shoot up. The monster is far from impressed by this logic and kills him regardless.
• Non-Malicious Monster: The monster is viewed by the Government Conspiracy as a simple animal; not malevolent, just hunting for food. This is called into question, however, as it's behavior can seem a little too sadistic and intelligently directed for an animal just trying to feed. Redcoat certainly doesn't consider it a natural part of the ecosystem and advocates it's destruction as an existential threat to the people living in it's range.
• Nothing Is Scarier: We never get a clear look at the monster, its body always shrouded in darkness and the windy snow. What we can make out makes it look like some kind of humanoid porcupine thing.
• Police Brutality: Lance's sin that the monster harasses him for is revealed to be him "accidentally" shooting a kid for theft back in his patrol cop days because he supposedly mistook the kid's toy gun for a real one. Unsurprisingly, the monster kills him in an especially sadistic way.
• Taking You with Me: Michael kills the monster, and himself, but hurling a fuel canister into the cabin's burning fireplace.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Predictably, the prison transport guards and prisoners initially have little trust for one another and spend a great deal of time arguing about what to do, with Lance repeatedly suggesting to the other guards that they leave the cons behind and Van Winkle trying to go for one of the guards' gun. Their teamwork improves dramatically as the night drags on, if only by necessity.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Lampshaded with Toons. The prisoners and guards hate him and he'd normally be The Millstone, but an arsonist is actually a pretty good thing to have around when you're traveling in freezing temperatures at night and fire-building is vital to survival, so for this specific situation, they're glad to have him.
• Together in Death: Michael's son Adam is waiting to greet him in the afterlife after he dies. Given that the monster has been plaguing Michael with fake visions of him the whole night, the real Adam has to reassure Michael that it's really him this time.

Redcoat

• Deadpan Snarker: Redcoat's many years of adventure have left him with an extremely sardonic sense of humor.

First Ghost

• The White House: The setting of the story.