Lost Scribe Finds Middleman - General

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April 18 2005

Lost Scribe Finds Middleman. "It's got elements of shows that have been on the air, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

SpikeBad | General | 23:32 CET | 6 comments total | tags:

If anyone's interested, Javier Grillo-Marxuach has a livejournal. It's a pretty interesting read. He seems like a really nice guy.

electricspacegirl | April 19, 00:37 CET

I'm going to have to check this out. I love "The Dead Zone" and I thought "Jake 2.0" had a lot of potential, too. I thought I wouldn't like "Zone", something that goes against canon (esp. SK canon) usually doesn't appeal to me; but the way it's been done has been enchanting.

brownishcoat | April 19, 02:10 CET

Javi's livejournal is the only blog I read and I always find it to be well written and funny. I shall definitely be checking out Middleman. Hmm lots of comics coming in the next few months that are outside of my usual purchases. Oh well, best start saving now :)

Paul_Rocks | April 19, 04:22 CET

If you want to see some crazy pictures of Javi, there are some posted on the "Destination: LA" thread at the Fuselage.

Willowy | April 19, 04:31 CET

Sounds more like a "Men in Black" ripoff.

rkayn | April 19, 09:08 CET

In a link that I thought had been posted here before (because it also has the artwork from the 1st few pages of the Spike one-shot, however I can't find the link now) Javi talks about the similarity to MIB:

BM: How does The Middleman compare to something like Men in Black?

JG-M: I’m trying to have fun with a lot of the conventions of the genre and things like that. Even though Men in Black is a comedy, it’s rooted in conspiracy theories, UFO lore, etc… and I’m making fun of the entire idea of the super-secret government organization, almost by doing away with it entirely instead of making a statement about it directly. It’s a convention of comic books that everyone works for a super-secret organization. So, I’ve created an organization that’s so secret, that even the people who work for it don’t know what it is or understand it. And it goes from there. Everything that happens in the book is making fun of some convention from science fiction. One of the things that happened in the Men in Black movies, which I didn’t really enjoy, was that they relied so much on the concept that when the big danger shows up you aren’t as invested in how they resolve themselves. I’m trying to take the focus away from the concept and back onto the characters, so I can put my characters in dangerous situations, but because you’ve come to know them and like them, you’ll worry about whether they’ll actually survive something. To me, Men in Black became so wrapped involved in its own mythology that it became an entity in of itself. The contrast between the real world and the world they dealt with vanished. Especially in the second movie and it became really abstract. Middleman is really Wendy’s story. She’s still trying to live her life, to be a painter and a twenty-something girl while being involved in the Middleman organization. She doesn’t have to give up her life to be a part of it, but it certainly messes with her life. By keeping that part of it alive, the danger and the absurdity of it are more tangible threats to her existence. I don’t think it compares to Men in Black. It’s a different take on the material. The Middleman organization is a way to get characters I like to write into situations that are really bizarre, which can be both frightening and funny at the same time.

Paul_Rocks | April 19, 16:33 CET

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