The Middleman: The Collected Series Indispensability
Viper Comics (November 2009)
Although my LCS got it in more recently, maybe a month or so ago. It’s been in my pull folder for a while.
WRITER/CREATOR: Javier Grillo-Marxauch
ARTISTS: Le McClaine, Chat Thomas
LETTERERS: Jon Surino (also tones and background assists), Jim Resnowski (also collection layout)
Sorry, I don’t have any pictures to break up all this text, but scanning images from a book like this isn’t all that easy. And I’m not risking damaging this book. If anyone has scans of the comic you wish to donate, get in touch with me, and I’ll tell you what panels I’d like to use.
I first heard about The Middleman from the excellent (and wrongly canceled) ABC Family television series, and when I saw in the credits that it was based on a comic, I really wanted to check it out. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one currently active. There were some trades, but they were old, too, so I couldn’t find them. I waited quite a while for this one when it was in Previews, but Diamond doesn’t get these things out that quick, and my local LCS doesn’t sell a lot of trades (take that, floppy haters!) so they only specially order them. I did order this one, but this is how long it took to arrive. Luckily, it was worth the wait.
The Collected Series Indispensability is a collection of all three Middleman series, including the “Legends of the Middleman” back-up stories. All the stories, except one that I’ll get to, were written by series creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach. The comic is not actually about the Middleman, but Wendy Watson, a struggling painter who lives in an “illegal sublet Wendy shares with another young, photogenic artist”. Yes, if you’ve seen the show, then you know how the captions work in this comic. The TV show is mostly faithful to the comic, and the first episode is an adaptation of the first arc, collected as “The Trade Paperback Imperative”. Every issue has that kind of weird titling, which is part of the fun.
And this is a very fun comic. If you haven’t seen the show (shame on you), it starts with Wendy working as a temp at a science lab, when one of the experiments turns into a big mutant and starts attacking people. This is Wendy’s first experience with the secret comic book style world the Middleman lives in, as well as the titular character himself. She’s later recruited (more like drafted) as his sidekick in the O2STK (Organization Too Secret To Know), an organization even the Middleman and his robot assistant Ida know nothing about, and they work for them. The current Middleman is the latest in a series of Middlemen who “fight evil so you don’t have to”. It all gets crazy from there.
The focus of the story is Wendy, who is the conduit for the readers into a world with monkey mobsters, killer luchadores, giant sharks, other assorted craziness. It all comes off as a love letter to every “this is why I love comics” moment you can think of or blog about. Wendy is our snarky tour guide, and you can’t help but fall in love with her, watching her balance her life as a struggling artist with a protesting roommate, playing song lyric trivia with her neighbor, and dealing with a boyfriend who breaks up with her on camera for a film project, with the life of being a sidekick to pseudo-cursing, tough as nails hero and swapping insults with the cranky old lady robot that sends them out on their crazy missions.
The only episode I haven’t seen is the one with the luchadores, so I don’t know if it matches the second arc, The Second Volume Inevitability, as we meet Sensei Ping, trainer of Middlemen, and his arch nemesis who captures both Ping and the Middleman. This forces Wendy to choose between saving her mentor and staying with her boyfriend, who gets shot trying to win her back. Here we get a look at how the Middleman life is affecting her personal life, and how the bystanders can get hurt. My favorite part of this is during a huge fight scene where you can actually see Fozzie Bear among the combatants. I remember in the adaptation of the unaired episode that there were quite a few Easter Eggs like that, so I really want to go back through and see if I can find more of the hidden ones.
The third story is The Third Volume Inescapability, in which Wendy may be forced to choose between her two worlds. It also introduces Manservant Neville, but where he and FATBOY were the main threat in the series, here is merely the servant of FATBOY’s leader, Kanimang Kang. We also learn that the Middleman had a sidekick before, the Middleboy, who was lost on a mission. That factors into the main story, which I’m not telling you about. (No, I’m not telling you what FATBOY stands for, either.) You’re just going to have to pick up this comic.
The collection ends with an alternate ending for this story, and a series of short stories called “Legends of the Middleman”, which is “Elsewords” in tone, involving the three main characters. We get a Middleman barbarian who works out of a brothel, a World War 2 story with the Middleboy thrown in, and jealous rivals Van Helsing and Phileas Fogg seeking the aid of Nikolai Tesla to destroy the Middleman. Yeah, I’m betting that last one just swayed anyone considering getting this book.
Even if you haven’t seen the TV show, you really need to get this book. It doesn’t knock Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures off of the BW top spot, but it does give the little lady one heck of a fight. There isn’t one moment of this collection, from start to finish, that isn’t awesome, fun, or touching. This is the biggest love letter to the media of comics, the Silver Age, and every superhero, sci-fi, and comic trope that’s ever come out of the media. If you’re a comic fan, you absolutely MUST get this book.
I don’t have a “deal” with Amazon, so I won’t make squat out of this (probably a mistake on my part, anyone know how you get that deal?), but here is this book, here is the TV show, and here is the adaptation of the unproduced TV episode. If these aren’t in your collection, and you have the funds, then this is an oversight that must be corrected immediately. In all forms, The Middleman is fun in its purest form and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
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