Javier Grillo-Marxuach, a writer and supervising producer on ABC’s hit series Lost, told SCI FI Wire that he has a new comic series, The Middleman from Viper Comics, which launches in July. The genre-based series focuses on the Middleman, a super-secret agent, and his assistant, Wendy, who together keep monsters, aliens and talking primates from attacking humanity and destroying our blissfully ignorant perception of the "normal world."

"It’s really my valentine to youth disenfranchisement," Grillo-Marxuach said in an interview. "The script actually started as a pilot script for a TV series, a little bit misguidedly, because it’s the form I’m used to working in. I just didn’t really think it could work with a TV budget, because it needed to have monsters and things. It’s got elements of shows that have been on the air, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it’s really very specific with a quirky character voice, and I think it’s really tailored to a comic-book audience. It tries to be very smart and has a wacky worldview, a thing comic-book audiences can really hook into."

Grillo-Marxuach has written for such SF TV series as SCI FI Channel’s The Chronicle, USA Networks’ The Dead Zone and UPN’s defunct Jake 2.0. Describing the concept of The Middleman, Grillo-Marxuach said: "The Middleman works for an organization that is so mysterious that he doesn’t know who he works for. He was hired by the previous Middleman and trained by him, and then when the previous Middleman dies, he then became the Middleman. He doesn’t have an infrastructure. They have a phone that rings and that sends them on jobs, but they don’t know who is sending them, and that’s why he’s the Middleman, because he doesn’t know. It’s supposed to poke a little fun at the super-secret organization. The first four issues are basically the pilot episode, and they tell the story of Wendy Watson, an artist working a series of meaningless temp jobs. She’s a jaded twentysomething who is so blasé about life in general that the existence of monsters doesn’t really bother her that much, which makes her the perfect [person] to become a member of the Middleman organization."

Cartoonist Les McClaine is the artist for the series, and he brings a retro style to the book. "It’s a little bit old-timey, with that Tintin quality to it," Grillo-Marxuach said, referring to the 1940s French comic series. "The spirit of the book isn’t slick; it’s a straightforward style that I really liked. When I was looking for somebody to draw it, Les McClaine was the first guy that I picked. He did a book called Highway 13. When I was reading that, I thought this guy has a style that is similar to how I’d like it to look, and it became the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

The first episode of the four-issue series will launch at Comic-Con International in San Diego in July, including a completely inaccurate variant cover that will be a different style from the book and have lots of sex and violence on it, unlike what is inside. Grillo-Marxuach said with a laugh: "There will be sex, there will be violence, there will be sexy-violence!"