Why I Love The Middleman!
Welcome to this week's column, which I've devoted to something that in 2008 came very close to my fanboy heart. I talk of course about Javier Grillo-Marxuach's independent comic turned even more independent cult series The Middleman!
Now, truth be told, my first real exposure to the series was seeing the commercial for the television show when channels flipping one day. That commercial made me smile a lot and I checked out the premiere of the show, which hooked me right from the start. Wendy Watson, our lead is your average Jane, the kind of character you can relate to right off the bat. She's an artist who shares an illegal sublet with her equally artistic roommate, Lacy.
Wendy temps for a living in order to live and find work and it's here where she experiences her first out of the ordinary situation where a giant tentacle monster attacks her, which is where she meets the Middleman for the first time and her adventure truly begins.
The charm of the series is its sense of humor and the fact that it goes head first into pop culture. Not to mention the fact that when it was translated to television, the whole first miniseries is pretty much exactly how it was in the comics as well as the second. I was surprised to find out just how faithful it was overall.
The great thing about the television series other than the actual writing was the actors' deliveries and how they managed to bring you into this world and make it believable. We had Matt Keeslar (who for the record could easily be a contender for the part of Steve Rogers aka Captain America) as our hero, the Middleman, whose name you may or may not discover by the end of the 12 episodes that ran. Then of course you had Natalie Morales as the cute and nerdy comic book reading artist Wendy Watson who was our point of view throughout the entire series.
Our heroes traversed adventures related to zombie fish, mysterious luchador wrestlers, hostile alien dictators, vampire puppets, mobster gorillas and even immortal musicians each with plenty of unique jokes and well placed gags that added so much to the fun. They even went so far as to transport Wendy to a parallel world where the Middleman was just like Kurt Russell's Snake Plisken from Escape from New York.
Javi also managed to in both the comics and the series throw so many pop culture references in that it really felt like one giant Easter egg hunt. Astute pop culture fanatics will easily pick up on at least 85 percent of them.
One of my favorite episodes came from meeting a Middleman of the past who was played by long term cult icon Kevin Sorbo (Hercules) who mixed both super hero and spy mentalities in a really interesting way.
The Middleman as a whole franchise is original and never felt like it was rehashing things from the past; the comic takes a huge swerve from the show at one point that I won't spoil that I honestly didn't really like too much. It will be interesting to see if Javi ever decides to return to it.
Another great thing about the world was the supporting cast, whether it was Wendy's slightly neurotic and a bit off roommate Lacy, or their good friend Noser who could always be seen asking things from well known songs to the Middleman's left hand woman Edna who was actually a robot. It had Whedon cast levels where you almost forget about the leads and the supporting cast steals the show.
The tech and the Middleman's base look like something straight out of the 1950s and added a little Batman flair to things with the HEYDAR leading the way for the Middleman to help solve his cases.
Mind you, Wendy Watson was no Robin, and in fact manages to surprise MM a few times throughout the series. I really have to commend Javi for having her be a strong female lead and not just another damsel in distress looking for the hero to save the day.
Half of the charm of the show really comes from Wendy's journey in finding her identity, which leads her to some very surprising places. Just like the comics, each episode was really a self-contained story with hints of something bad possibly helping in the long run. Which we found out was going to be the case with a 13th episode that the network sadly did not produce with the show runners.
But Javi didn't call it quits there and put out a beautiful graphic novel published by Viper Comics and manages to wrap up most of the unanswered questions like who the Middleman was before he became the Middleman and who he was in love with, as well as just who was pulling the strings the entire time.
Honestly, at the end of the day The Middleman is a must read series, a must watch series and a great escape from real life for a little while. What's not to love about a series where it mixes old school Batman with Men in Black and has a lead hero who doesn't swear and instead utters such classics as "Sons of Zanzibar, Dubbie!?" Plus you can find everything all together: both the full collection of the comic, the DVD box set of the series and the original graphic novel of episode 13 for around 50 dollars, which I'd say is more than a steal. So, fair readers, I highly recommend the series and tell you that you should most definitely give it a watch. Who knows? Maybe we drum up enough interest and help get it back up and running like Family Guy! I really hope we could do that.
That's it for this week, readers. Join me next week as we explore something completely different. See you in 7!
Eric Ratcliffe is a young writer/pop culture journalist/interviewer currently working on pitching a project named the Hunter chronicles. When not reading his weekly stack Eric can be found watching DVDs, playing on his 360 (gamertag: Zack Hunter) or just surfing online trying to find a scoop or two. Brand new to the Comic Related family, Eric is a fun new voice. Eric shops at TJ's Collectibles. Visit them on the web at www.tjcollect.com!
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