Geoff Johns, Gary Frank, and More Comic Creators Launch New Ghost Machine Imprint
Half a dozen new books were announced at New York Comic Con this week.
Geoff Johns will spearhead a new, shared comics universe at Image Comics under the imprint "Ghost Machine." Johns, who previously published Geiger and Junkyard Joe at Image, will launch Ghost Machine with Gray Frank, Brad Meltzer, Bryan Hitch, Francis Manapul, Peter Tomasi, Jason Fabok, Lamont Magee, and Maytal Zchut. All of the creators have ties to DC, with every participant having written Batman, Superman, or Justice League comics except for Zchut and Magee, both of whom worked on TV series based on DC characters. Magee, who developed Young Jedi Adventures for television, previously served as a writer and producer on Black Lightning, while Zchut was a script supervisor on Johns's Stargirl show.
Ghost Machine is characterized as a creator-owned and creator-run company, although it isn't clear if all of the founders have an equal stake in all of the properties, or if each individual creator owns their individual properties. The latter has been the norm at Image for years, but Image has also worked with creators like Rob Liefeld, who runs a studio and owns the IP his employees work on.
"Our ambition for Ghost Machine is to push beyond superheroes, introducing new genres, characters and shared universes, completely co-owned by all the creators involved," the Ghost Machine founders said in a statement. "We see this as the future of how creatives will work and retain creative control and meaningfully participate in success like never before."
"Our passion is for the magic of graphic storytelling and the emotional resonance of compelling characters," they added. "But we are not just a comic book company – we are the first wholly creator-owned and operated media company of its kind, born out of a desire to create and succeed together."
That idea -- that Ghost Machine isn't just a publisher where you can develop screen-friendly IP, but actually a media company in itself, is an interesting one, and it likely suggests that they have plans to develop shows and movies based on the Ghost Machine characters pretty quickly.
In addition to Magee's and Zchut's work in TV, Johns and Meltzer have both run shows -- Stargirl for Johns (through Warner and Berlanti Productions) and Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum for Meltzer (via PBS Kids).
April 2024 appears to be the genesis for Ghost Machine: Fabok's Rook: Exodus will launch that month, as well as Redcoat (by Johns and Hitch). Johns and Frank's Geiger will resume then, as well. Later in the year, Zchut's Devour will launch in October, while Tomasi and Manapul's The Rockefellers, as well as First Ghost (Meltzer) and The Soulless (Magee) will launch at some point in 2024, with a release date not yet set.