Middleman Vol 1

The Middleman was originally pitched as a TV series, and unable to get funds to produce it, Javier Grillo-Marxauch decided to make it a graphic novel instead. A good thing he did, because not only does the story translate perfectly to a comic, but its subsequent underground success eventually led to a complete ABC season of The Middleman coming out early this year. Talk about the potential of the medium!

It’s kind of hard to explain what The Middleman is about. (Umm”¦everything?) It caters to escapism inherent in geeks, it is a send-off ”“ and a celebration – of buddy-cop-series like The Avengers and The Green Hornet; it’s an exercise in complete coolness. It has machine-gun toting apes, paranoid robots, mad scientists who want to take over the world, comic book references, and cheesy plot-points. The Middleman is the eponymous square-jawed, milk-chugging hero who saves the world from evil, accompanied by hot, wise-cracking artist sidekick Wendy Watson, who, when she’s not stabbing alien monsters in the eye with a papercutter, prefers to shoot zombies on her X-box. (Did someone say wish fulfilment?) That’s all there is to know how full of win this series is.  Grillo-Marxauch’s dialogues crackle and McClane’s line-work pops, and the story they create together makes for some mighty crunchy popcorn. But junk food is ”“ at the end of the day ”“ good only until it lasts. The comic treads a fine line between disintegrating completely into a mass of cool punch-lines and telling a good story; it teeters on the edge, but makes it through. Barely, just barely.