Who's This? My least favorite Outsider.
The facts: Geo-Force was created for Batman and the Outsiders (therefore premiering in New Teen Titans #28's preview, July 1983) at the behest of editor Len Wein, and in collaboration with Marv Wolfman and George Perez who had Terra waiting in the wings. Not that Marv and GF's credited creative team - Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo - ever really did anything with the brother-sister connection. Geo-Force, prince of Markovia, would go on to be an Outsiders mainstay and eventually graduate to the Justice League in the 2000s. He doesn't appear in the New 52, but during Rebirth, he seems to have been rebooted anyway, meeting Katana for the first time, etc., though in Dark Metal, he's part of Batman's Outsiders with her and other alumni as a covert hero force. In Shadow War, he disguised himself as Deathstroke and murdered Ra's al Ghul to frame his sister's killer so Talia would go after him. He had to be defeated by Damian Wayne. Somebody out there must have disliked him as much as I do to make him the secret villain of a Batman story.
How you could have heard of him: Television appearances include Batman: The Brave and the Bold, as two derivative characters of the Arrowverse, and in Young Justice.
Example story: Showcase '93 #4 (April 1993) "The Haunting of Castle Markov" by Mike W. Barr, Bryan Hitch and John Beatty
With characters designed to be members of teams from the start, it's interesting to see if they would work in a solo story. The Showcase revival to the rescue! And early Bryan Hitch? Interesting. A warm summer night in Prince Brion's homeland of Markovia where a lookalike for the Outsiders' currently-dead "woman in the chair" Dr. Helga Jace (no really, why does this Dr. Kneidel look exactly the same? script doing the heavy lifting after the art came back with an "error"?) is having stuff moved into the "Earth-Fusion Lab". She smells something burning and it's not the movers' overt sexism. Sabotage? Meanwhile, Brion meets a lady friend at the airport, but the date is interrupted by that emergency. Geo-Force to the rescue.
Where are all the movers? I guess they ran off and left Kneidel to die. Thankfully, GF's null-gravity powers get them both out of this jam. His date Denise is left in charge of the poor woman while Geo-Force goes into action (vacation ruined!). What can you do with earth/gravity powers against an electrical fire? Plenty, it seems.
If he had had his sister's powers, it would have been much easier. Okay, back to the date. Denise sees SOMEthing in a mirror and thinks maybe Castle Markov is haunted, but Brion assures her it's just History.
If Geo-Force really did have his own solo-series, one might imagine it as a kind of royal family drama like The Crown, or perhaps closer to Princess Diaries, only with super-powers. I'm sure there's a market for that, if perhaps not in a comic book market exactly. Brion would really need to step up his dating game though, because the dinner we see has Dr. Kneidel sitting between him and Denise, and smoking at the table in nose-shot of the pregnant queen. And then Brion's father's suit of armor attacks and Geo-Force uses his "plus-gravity" powers (who wrote this, George Orwell?!) to make the sword too heavy before punching the figured into pieces. So do we believe in ghosts now? Well, maybe not, because GF then finds the phasing villain group the Untouchables in the west wing, trying to steal something.
They're responsible for the fire and the armor attack, but they have reasons! They're looking for the equipment necessary to save one of their number dying of intangibility! Unfortunately, they don't know if they can trust Geo-Force, so they refuse to surrender in exchange for help.
In the ensuing fight, the Untouchables turn HIM intangible, and that's as good a cliffhanger as any. Next issue: "Out of Touch". Oof, that's an indictment of the monarchy!
We'll leave it there and send you scurrying for issue 5's resolution (but I think you can figure it out). All in all, not bad. It uses Markovia to some effect (the Latverian-like cross between medieval court and super-science), uses Geo-Force as a romantic lead, shows his powers as versatile, and rips his shirt in just the right place to remove the frankly ridiculous "GF" that I've mocked so often. Does it redeem Geo-Force for me? Ehh, partly. Ok, my new least favorite is Looker.
Who's Next? A Charlton villain.
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