If you've never heard of The Middleman, consider it the smartest genre-savvy spin on action heroes and weird mystery that you've never experienced -- for shame. It started out in 2004 as a series of graphic novels, written by Javier Grillo-Marxuach and drawn by Les McClaine. In 2008, it became a television show for one glorious season on ABC family before disappearing into the ether. Grillo-Marxuach and McClaine put together a final comic, wrapping up the show's last storyline in 2009, and moved on to other projects.
But the fans never forgot--and neither did The Middleman's creators. "It's not on Netflix, it's not on Hulu, and yet people find it, and they really love the show," Grillo-Marxuach told WIRED. It was the fans' enthusiasm that led him to approach independent publisher Viper Comics with a new plan: what if they bypassed the traditional distribution system and switched to a print-to-order model--and, in the process, crowdfunded creative costs for a new chapter of the Middleman story?
Now, less than a week in, the Middleman indiegogo campaign has already funded its $40,000 goal: a new Middleman graphic novel, written by Grillo-Marxuach and drawn by McClaine; AND a live reading of the new book, by the cast of the TV series. That's not the only connection between the comic and the show, though.
"The plan here is basically, with this comic, to cross over the comics and the TV continuities," McClaine told WIRED. In addition to the TV cast, the reading will feature actress and writer Amber Benson as comic-book Wendy, who will find herself face-to-face with TV Wendy, played by Natalie Morales.
It's a natural intersection, says Grillo-Marxuach. "Les and I left the comic-book continuity in 2007 with a massive cliffhanger—there was a dead Middleman, Wendy's dad shows up and he's a Middleman—and we also left those same story strands hanging in the television series, so it seemed like both of those stories were ripe to be told in an interesting way."
The new Middleman graphic novel is scheduled to debut in summer 2014, at Comic Con International in San Diego.
