Lost 'n' Space: Javier Grillo-Marxuach on Comics, TV, and Epic HaikuBy Shaun Manning  Unless you've been living on a mysterious desert island for the last two years, you may have heard of the intricately planned and powerfully executed TV show Lost. Airing Wednesdays on ABC and on iTunes whenever you like, the drama follows the survivors of a plane crash as they fight to survive in a lost world.
But that's TV. We're here for the comics. But like the strangers lost on the island, TV and comics share certain unexpected connections, one of them being Javier Grillo-Marxuach. A writer and supervising producer on the hit show, Javi has begun dabbling in the world of graphic storytelling. The first collection of his miniseries, The Middleman, arrives this month, as does the first issue of the second mini. And in April, Grillo-Marxuach takes on one of the Marvel Universe's vilest bad guys in the four-issue "Annihilation" mini, Super Skrull. All of this gave me the perfect excuse to ask him for an interview.
Shaun Manning: Viper Comics seems to be going all out to promote your comic, The Middleman, this month. A trade paperback of the first miniseries is arriving in stores, and the first issue of volume 2 has a $.99 cover price. The first series was very well received, though you've said elsewhere that you would like to fine-tune things a bit for the second go-around. What do you feel worked and didn't work in your initial offering, and what can fans expect in the new series?
Javier Grillo-Marxuach: God bless Viper - they believe in the title and have really put their muscle where their mouth is - and thankfully, the reviews have validated their faith in the book... so that's good!
I love how the first mini turned out, make no mistake, but looking at the script, I realized that I was not taking full advantage of the scale of the comics medium. I originally wrote The Middleman as a television pilot, so, in the back of my head, I kept telling myself "don't write it too big, you only have X amount of dollars." For Volume 2, I made a concerted effort to divest myself of that prejudice and allow bigger things to take center stage. The real trick has been to keep it what I want Middleman to be about - relationships and characters who are fun to watch - while providing more bang for your buck - in the form of hundreds of marauding masked wrestlers, cursed Mayan pyramids and big action set pieces. I think Volume 2 manages to do that!
SM: There's been a trend in comics lately for spin-offs of even newish titles from independent publishers, such as Viper's Dead@17 and Boom!'s Hero Squared. Can we expect any Middleman companion books?
 JGM: Actually, there is a little some-some we were going to put out called Legends of the Middleman, a three story compilation about Middlemen across the ages - a barbarian Middleman, a victorian Middleman and world war two Middleman (with his sidekick "the Middleboy") with guest artists, Josh Howard, Tom Kurzanski and Ryan Cody - but when the project hit on some delays, we decided to include the content with the Volume 2 trade paperback, which we are putting out in July. It's going to be one of those cases where, when you buy the trade, you are going to get a lot of added bang for your buck!
SM: You've also got a mini coming up for Marvel, Super Skrull, as part of their "Annihilation" event. Let's say someone hears "that guy from Lost" is writing a comic book, and picks up Super Skrull with no prior knowledge of the character, his history, or Marvel Comics in general. What would you hope this reader would come away with from this title?
 JGM: At its core, Super-Skrull is a story about an old, disgraced warrior who gets a chance to prove everyone wrong. My hope is that whether you know the character or not becomes secondary to his being a villain put in a position where he is fighting for something extremely dear to him - and that the journey is an entertaining one. When Andy Schmidt (my editor at Marvel) first talked to me about Super-Skrull, I had misgivings about how to make the character entertaining and relevant - but then it struck me that telling the story of a vanquished villain who has yet to renounce his evil ways - but who needs his own ruthlessness to prevail even as he comes to the realization that the path he has taken in life has been misguided is one I really haven't seen all that often. Also - and I think this is supremely important - there are scads upon scads of tush-whippin' cosmic action in the book, drawn superbly by the very talented Gregory Titus. Seriously, you have never seen the combined power of the Fantastic Four used as ruthlessly as Super-Skrull uses them in this book! He is a mean, cunning, rotten-to-the-core mo-fo... and evil can be a hell of a lot more fun than good, when done properly!
SM: Storywise, what has Super Skrull been up to in the days/months/years leading up to this mini? Where do we find him when the story begins? And, of course, what can fans look forward to in the series itself?
JGM: He has been traveling from world to world, trying to pitch in the fight against the Annihilation Wave. Because the Skrull Empire was in tatters before the invasion - what with Galactus eating the Skrull homeworld and all - and fragmented into fiefdoms controlled by warlords, I am playing the Super-Skrull as a masterless wandering Samurai. The imperial remnants don't want him fighting on their side, but - because of a very specific and personal reason - he NEEDS to be a part of the fight, and, as the mini begins, he decides that he is going to get in on the action, no matter what it takes.
SM: You've described the Super Skrull as a wandering samurai that no one wants on their side. What sort of uneasy alliances can we expect him to strike? Any surprise guest stars? How long would it have taken him to open the hatch?
 JGM: There will definitely be one very surprising alliance/guest star in the first issue - after that, it's all new territory. Super-Skrull's adventures take him to the Negative Zone, where we are going to introduce some awesome new characters - good and evil.
As far as the hatch goes, Super-Skrull would Thing-fist that bad-boy into submission in seconds!
SM: I'm in the rather unusual position of having discovered Lost after reading Middleman. I thought, "Hey, if the guy can write a comic like this, I wonder what his show is like?" The show, as I'm sure you've heard numerous times, is mind-blowing. But I'd like to spend a bit of time talking about the delivery method. Having come in late, I watched the first season on DVD; now, I'm finishing my homework through iTunes trying to catch up to the Wednesday broadcasts. How do you feel these new technologies will change the way people watch TV? Or the way networks schedule, order, or cancel shows? Do you think producers and execs will gear programming to the DVD market?
 JGM: First of all, thanks for the kind words about Lost.
As far as the distribution, I think that - a few issues of compensation and royalties aside - all of these new delivery systems are pretty spectacular. What they are doing is putting the power in the hands of the viewers as far as how and when they want to experience the content: and I think anything that does that is a good thing. Some of my favorite shows - most notably 24 - have become that after marathon DVD viewings. What I think will become the status quo is that the networks will continue to be the first run venue for series television, with all of the ancillary distribution coming in afterwards. It seems to be the best of all worlds, you still get the water-cooler/communal aspect of TV viewing with the flexibility to enjoy shows at your own pace. It's a win-win for the viewer.
I think it'd be great to get series that are designed for, say, the iPod or the vcast phones - the important thing is that they be geared to the medium... if I am going to watch something on a screen that size, it should be because the content is perfect for that venue. Ultimately, what drives all of this is that the content fit the delivery. To my mind, a lot of the growing pains of the new medium will center on trying to out do shows like Lost, rather than come up with something specific to the new form.
SM: You mention that there is content for iPods, vcast phones and the like should be specific to the venue, to maximize the capabilities of the device and the material. I would tend to agree—I mentioned downloading Lost from iTunes, but I watch it on my computer rather than the tiny, tiny screen of a portable. What I'm wondering, though, is with the current and future array of devices that might be used to view video and other media—the Sony PSP comes to mind in addition to those you've mentioned—do you see exclusive content driving hardware sales? Or will a universal portable format emerge to dominate? I'm thinking back to the old Nintendo/Sega video game wars, whereas now most games are available across different systems.
 JGM: If history has taught us anything is that there will always be competing formats! What I hope is that as computers become synonymous with tv/music/entertainment consoles, they will be able to handle the format clash internally. That much said, I do not believe that there will ever be a single universal solution to all content - so the quality of available content is what will drive sales for whatever format. There's a reason I have owned Star Wars on vhs, laser disc, widescreen laser disc, japanese import laser disc and dvd - it's a great film, whatever I am watching films on that decade, I - and many others - have always shelled out the cash for the moves I love!
SM: Also, on the royalties front, I know digital rights management (DRM) is a bit of a hot point. On the one hand, creators don't want people stealing their work; on the other, the DRM devices often prevent consumers from using the media in a way they might prefer (i.e. I can't burn my iTunes videos to run in my television's DVD player). The success of the iTunes music store proves that most people are willing to pay for material they find valuable, yet there is still a large degree of piracy of music, video, and comics (!!!) digital files, something which would almost certainly increase without the safeguards instituted by DRM. As someone with a concrete interest in how this plays out, what sort of balance do you think can be accomplished between 'the producers and the consumers?" Do you see the advent of new technology contributing to a solution or making the problem more difficult to tackle?
JGM: As far as there being a balance - here's the deal - I like getting paid royalties on content I create, it's only fair. That much said, I think that there will always be file sharing, tape trading, DVD swapping, whatever. My belief is that those things actually stimulate demand for the official versions of content. I think that people who download shows will still pay to own the content in a high resolution format that shows it off in the best possible way. The balance is that both will always exist regardless of the technology - one feeds the other. The best we can do as providers of content is to put it out there in a pristine format, with much value added content... and the people will show up. There is no better ad for piracy than punked out, bare-bones, badly transferred versions of content that deserves better!
SM: I know you're credited as a writer and supervising producer on Lost. For those of us not entirely ensconced in the media arts, what does this role mean and how does it translate into what we see on screen?
 JGM: The responsibilities of a producer vary from show to show... on Lost my primary responsibility is in the writers' room - where I aid in the development of episodic as well as season-wide storylines. This show eats story up like you wouldn't believe, so what all of us do, when we are not writing scripts, is actively contributing to the development of the series. In short - if it's on the screen, it's because a brain trust of writers, including myself and under the guidance of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, came up with every variation until we hit on the right way to tell the story!
SM: Why polar bears?
JGM: They are the perfect blend of cute and vicious! Seriously, polar bears = fuzzy raptors!
SM: Any other upcoming projects you'd like to tease or talk about? Comics, TV, novels, haiku? Are there any comic book projects you'd love to tackle at Marvel or DC?
JGM: I am working on the world's first epic haiku - but squeezing in the combined incident of the Baghavad Gita, The Mahabharata, the Old Testament and the Iliad into seventeen syllables is proving to be quite a bitch!
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