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| Brother Power the Geek #1 (October 1968), Script: Joe Simon, Pencils and Inks: Al Bare |
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| Brother Power the Geek #1 (October 1968), Script: Joe Simon, Pencils and Inks: Al Bare |
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| Swamp Thing Annual #5 (1989), Writer: Neil Gaiman, Penciler: Richard Piers Rayner, Penciler: Mike Hoffman, Inker:Kim Demulder, Artist: Mike Mignola |
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| Brother Power the Geek #2 (December 1968), Script: Joe Simon, Pencils and Inks:Al Bare |
Brother
I remember when my grandpa
would call me in the middle of the night
and rant to me in a wheezing voice saying
the end of the world would be the ascent of Celestial New Gods!
Or the Batman was really a golem brought to life by a man named Read
who could turn into the amazing Elastic Lad with purple-cola cosmic rays.
My grandpa was insane, hopped up from too much acid and sex
back in his old hippy days.
But a little while ago he began talk in a new voice, almost musical,
“The ages of man
have been marked by miracles...
It is a first baby step in man’s challenge...
a mighty force of nature...
This is a about man and nature,
but mostly about the soul of man.”
It was a story about a man who was not a man,
and was really just an alabaster puppet with corn silk hair and a sunny outlook.
Who was about electricity and the dream of doing something new.
And how that dream was slowly crushed and turned into a freak sideshow
in some crazy camp psychedelic circus. Which was run by people who just thought
psychedelic just meant psychotic and synthetic.
Which really wasn’t true for him, but the pale puppet ran anyway,
just ran off the face of the earth itself.
And ran straight into an exile that outlasted the end of a Crisis on Infinite Earths.
And when he finally did return, he was different. An artifact from a begotten era
fueled by the neurosis of an unfulfilled dream. No longer Brother power in numbers,
he was a Brother alone, unpowered, a geek. A thing that lived and fought for its very soul, and lost. But in losing this he became something more,
Now no longer just a puppet, he became a orange-blue elemental that represented all the puppets. Whose strings were are greased by slogans and false promise word salads.
And then they are made to dance.
But no he didn’t dance, he walked away. To find the dream again, and love.
At the end of this story he walks away from everything,
leaving nothing but loneliness and his face from a distant era.
He’s looking for a family and a dream that’s dead as the beaches he walks on.
And I say that’s a sad story, but then my grandpa tells me its not over yet.
The dream is still alive, and he’ll come around.
"Believe us, The Geek will touch down in good time,
but you'll never believe where!!"
