I Predict A Riot-Fest Of Laughter: Reviewing ‘Geezer’ #2

Bands may notoriously fear their follow up second record, and for many that is where they’re careers do end, but writer Will Potter and artist Philip Bond do not have to fear such a fate with Geezer #2, their own follow up to the fun-filled first issue. Long story short, this is another rip-roaring success of an issue that had me chortling from cover to cover with its clever comedic script and magnificent art. 

Clearly channeling some of his own memories of touring the US in the mid-nineties with Cud (still going strong and still touring regularly) we get an issue that flashes back and forth between the formative year of 1993 when the fictitious Brit-Pop band were finding their feet and their sound — much of it a carbon copy of more established and talented bands — and their ill-fated 1994 US tour supporting Clobber. A band who are pandered to at every stop on the tour, while the members of Geezer are unceremoniously shunted to the sidelines. At every opportunity.

But, slumming it on tour across the US of A makes for far more opportunities for misadventure and mirthful mischief. Often fuelled with whatever booze and drugs lead singer and lead loser, Martin Bland, can get his hands on. Leading to the opening scene from which the rest of the issue takes its lead. You see, we open the issue with Martin half-ass naked in the middle of the desert. How he got there unfolds across the span of this hilarious issue that will resonate with many small bands and fans too. You don’t have to be in a band in the mid-nineties to know how gruelling and mad things could be. But it helps. And in being in such a band and at the epicentre of the whole Brit-Pop invasion of the States that crashed and burnt before it could every catch fire, Potter’s wry and well observed scripting and dialogue really captures the tone of the times. A fictitious memoir told through the eyes of a hopeless opportunist who you can’t help but root for as he and his band are fed through the uncaring money-making American music corporate machine. It’s one vaudevillian vignette after another in a dense and delightful road journey.

No stranger to being at the epicentre of this headiest of times is artist Philip Bond, who made a huge impact on this reviewer not only in his work on 2000 AD but also when he was one of many creators who fronted the hip and happening Deadline magazine where he and his fellow accomplices delighted many a reader with their irreverent and in-the-moment comic strips that captured this era so brilliantly. And once again he channels his younger self in this comic with art that is as equally well observed as Potter’s scripts. And at times infused with the slightest hint of realism in several of the characters’ portraitures. Seems these guys do remember enough of the hedonistic nineties to put pen to paper. As such, you’ll spend a good time pouring over each panel capturing many of the faces and the fashions of this era. Nostalgic it may well be, but it’s a story as relevant today as it was then. 

It’s another fun and frothy riot-fest of an issue that harnesses the best, and worst, excesses of the times that is wonderfully character driven. This isn’t just Martin Bland’s story, but the story of a band of friends and misfits trying to make their mark on the world through their collective love of playing live music. Meeting with a label exec who can’t even remember his own PA’s name, being downgraded to a cockroach infested hotel, and finding yourself stranded in just your undies in the Arizona desert. All in a day’s work for a touring band. Can you dig it? I can.

Geezer #2 is out now in the US from Off Register Press and available in the UK at OK Comics (Leeds), Gosh (London), and online here.