The Comic Con video of the "Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse" table read is a poor substitute for getting the actual episode, but at least now you get to hear some of that fantastic dialogue coming out of the mouths of the actors, the way it was meant to. Our favorite moment: Manservant Neville (Mark Sheppard) growls, "My plan is sheer elegance in its draconian complexity!" (Take that, Guy Goddard!). And of course, if the video's not enough for you, the whole thing has been released as a graphic novel as well.

The whole thing is on YouTube, and the playlist of all the segments is here.

For those of you coming to this late, The Middleman was a graphic novel that spawned a television show on ABC Family last year. It followed the adventures of art student Wendy Watson, who takes a temp job that turns out to be an apprenticeship with the Middleman, a mysterious superhero who fights monsters and mad scientists. And the Middleman strikes up an awkward but really sweet flirtation with Wendy's roommate Lacey.

The Forbidden Romance Contingency: Show creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach says he balked at having any kind of romance between MM and Lacey. "I was only willing to make it a joke in the pilot," but insisted that would be the end of it. The pilot, incidentally, was 90 percent the same as the first issue of his graphic novel, laying out the characters as broad archetypes: the stoic, quirky hero, the snarky art student and her idealistic roommate.

But this is what happens when you develop a TV show, Grillo-Marxuach says. You bring that story that you created sitting in a room by yourself into a room full of other writers, and they start putting in their own ideas and influences. And you bring in actors like Natalie Morales (Wendy Watson), Matt Keeslar (The Middleman) and Brit Morgan (Lacey Thornfield) and they have bring their own stuff to the characters. One of the things that really jumps out at you, if you read the graphic novel (which you should) and then watch the TV series (which you most definitely should) is how much more complex and nuanced the characters become. Grillo-Marxuach says that's a result of working on the characters in a collaborative setting.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.And Grillo-Marxuach says he has "boundaries" in his own writing ability, stuff he can't or doesn't do. So when the other writers on the show started pushing for Lacey and MM to go on a date, Grillo-Marxuach pushed back. "But the writers in the writer's room kept insisiting... It's weird to be a showrunner at loggerheads with the writing room." He objected for several reasons: "He's older than she is, he's Wendy's boss and an authority figure." But in the end, he gave in, and that led to some of the more poignant moments in the show, and deepened the characters immensely. "If it was just me writing this in my room by miself doing every episode you'd never have seen that," says Grillo-Marxuach. "I'm not a megalmanical show runner, and I like it when people make my work better."

The Superhero Comedy Initiative: We just sat down and watched most of the show's run once again on DVD — the DVD box set comes out July 28, incidentally — and it's striking how much the show feels like a straight-up comedy when you watch a bunch of episodes in a row. Grillo-Marxuach is happy for people to view The Middleman as a comedy. "It was always a comedy, in that it always riffs on popular culture, and it always had this very specific pattery way of talking."

"If you want to send a message to the world — and I don't know that the show was a big message show — it's better to do it by making people laugh than by being preachy," Grillo-Marxuach says. The Middleman "was always a very sweet-souled show, and it had a lot of heart. It has a lot of pity towards villains. It says that evil is little people doing a lot of work not to be good, even though being good is probably easier."

And as we talked about last summer at Comic Con, a big part of the show's lightness is in response to the fetishization of darkness in genre entertainment of the past 20 years, shows and movies which insist that life is hard and full of struggle, and heroism will destroy your life. In response, "an affirmation of the possibility of joy and accomplishment is very much what the show is all about. Of course, my show got canceled after 12 episodes, and The Dark Knight made $600 billion," notes Grillo-Marxuach.

The Unlikely Terry Nation In-Joke Alert:The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The fact that The Middleman is such an upbeat show makes it even funnier that — SPOILER ALERT — the unfilmed final episode is full of tiny references to Blake's 7, the famously depressing British science fiction series. I would list them, but we'd be here all day. "I was trying to find the show that has the most depressing series finale ever" to reference in The Middleman's finale, says Grillo-Marxuach. That unfilmed final episode, of course, is coming out as a graphic novel in time for Comic Con, and there'll be a reading of the episode's script, featuring the original cast, on Thursday at Comic Con. And for those who missed it, here's the official description:

Who is The Middleman's long-lost love? Can Lacey Thornfield ever forget her requited but never-acted-upon attraction to The Middleman? Is Manservant Neville a beneficent plutocrat or an evil madman with a nefarious plan for world domination? Will Wendy Watson and Tyler Ford ever find time for one another? Will Wendy Watson ever wear a slave girl costume? All your burning questions will be answered - and all your burning answers will be questioned - in this season-ending, series-concluding installment of The Middleman.

And at the right is a sneak peek at the graphic novel's final image of MM, from original artist Les McClain.

Anyway, all of those Blake's 7 references are there to set up a downer ending, but the graphic novel's actual ending is not that bleak, says Grillo-Marxuach. In fact, the graphic novel version of the series finale has a more upbeat ending than the actual episode would have had if it had been filmed as planned. By the time the show's creators were working on the 13th episode, they were exhausted from doing the first 12 and struggling with "big budget obstacles," and their beloved colleague Neil Levin had just died. (The show's 12th and final episode is dedicated to Levin.) But since Grillo-Marxuach had some time to rework the script slightly between the show's cancellation and the graphic novel coming out, "I found a way to end it on a more optimistic note... Had we shot it, it would have had more weariness."

So as Grillo-Marxuach puts it, "In our world, Blake is not evil, and the Federation is destroyed." (This led to us having a huge debate over whether Blake is evil in the Blake's 7 series finale.)

The "Never Say Never Again" Potential: So if the DVD box set sells a billion copies, could The Middleman still return in some form? Absolutely, says Grillo-Marxuach. "The nice thing is, this happened with Firefly, it happened with Futurama, it happened with Family Guy. There's a history of cult shows being found and further exploited by the corporations, in a good way."

So this seems like a great moment to plug the DVDs, which are coming out July 28 on Shout Factory. We'll post a review of the box set later, but they're already available for preorder at Amazon.com. And it's never too early to do your Christmas shopping. You never know when your local shopping mall will be overrun with gun-toting gorillas, after all.

So are you the straight man to Natalie Morales (Wendy Watson)'s funny woman?

I would say Natalie is the wry sensibility that allows the audience to identify with what she's going through, the conflict and the story. And the Middleman is the thing she gets to react against, the Middleman is such an extreme character you would never quite find him in real life, yet he has enough human elements to make him approachable.

So in the latest episode, we almost find out the Middleman's real name. Do you know what it is?

I do.

But you can't tell me, huh?

We've been saving it for one of the episodes, where Wendy goes on a search to find out what his real name is. She follows him and finds that he hangs out at the creamery, the church, and gives food to the poor.

So Wendy obviously has huge daddy issues, but what about the Middleman?

The Middleman has family issues. We've never explored this. I do say [in one episode] I correspond with my mother thrice yearly via formal letter. I had a rocky upbringing. I adopt [the android] Ida as my crazy mother and Wendy as my wry commenting daughter.

Daughter? Or Sister?

Sister, daughter. We've kind of gone back and forth. The Middleman becomes the closest thing she's had to having a dad. [But over time he becomes] more like an older brother.

It's definitely not your traditional sidekick-hero relationship between MM and WW, how do you work that with Natalie?

There is a part during the next episode, where Wendy's character becomes more or less a full-fledged Middleman, and she starts solving the crimes and she starts to come into her own as a character, and you start to see that more as the series progresses. Where once it was a trainee-to-boss thing, it's more a of a partnership, a duo where they're solving the crimes together.

Talking to you, you don't sound like the Middleman. How did you create the character's voice?

I wanted to make sure the Middleman is very articulate and he enunciates very well. He's a very specific person. He likes things to be orderly. I don't know how exactly I came up with the voice. There was something about the voice that evolved naturally as i was working to the show. I made some recordings while I was doing some auditions for the show, and while I was learning the lines. And I went back and listened to it, and it was completely different. It's evolved over the course of the show. Every week we have a read-through of the coming episode, and we have an opportunity to hear how all the characters sound together. [Natalie] has a very Miami kind of drawl, and Ida has the very Midwestern staunch patriarch thing, and I sort of come in with the sort of Dudley Doright with a little bit of Adam West.

That's awesome that you're paying tribute to Adam West.

He's the prototypical hero. The Middleman is an amalgam of so many different characters and heroes, just like the show has elements of [different genres.] We're gong to do an alternate Mirror Middleworld that's like Star Trek, and we've done other... crazy plots that we've more or or less done as homage to other sci fi shows.

One thing I really like about the show is all those moments where the Middleman really ought to be pissed at Wendy, but he's nice instead. Like when she nearly gets the entire world sucked into Hell, and he's very easy going about it. How do you play those moments?

I'm a father myself. Being a parent you see how you really have to restrain a lot of your initial impulses when you have a child, because you know they're in that learning phase. It's the same thing with Wendy: the Middleman has to pull himself back, because he knows she is in in a learning phase. One consistent choice I've made with the Middleman is he always skews to the positive. It really is a choice by the Middleman never to let himself go to a darker place, even when he's frustrated. It's part of what makes it funny, even when he's shaming Wendy, he's still trying to do it in a very positive way, a very gung-ho way. If anything, the Middleman goes too far in trying to be the perfect role model for Wendy.

You keep referring to Wendy as the Middleman's daughter. Do you think Natalie sees it that way?

I doubt it. Natalie and I are completely opposite people, and completely opposite actors. We look at the scenes in completely different ways, which is what makes the dynamic between the characters so interesting. Obviously we're friendly... but it helps us [create] the internal tension-admiration that goes on throughout the series and comes out within the characters.

Keeslar explained the darker and sad side to Middleman, pegging him as a "rugged individualist," forced into solitude. Keeslar says the audience, "will see how Middleman is kind of trapped by his job. That he has a hard time having a life outside of fighting comic-book evil. He's sort of hemmed in by the impractical life of constantly having to save the world. So when relationships develop, he often has to cut them short. He can't devote his attention to anything other than his work."

But at least the work is crazy interesting, including fighting trout-craving zombies that Middleman and Wendy have to attack by smearing fish innards all over themselves. I'll take a little loneliness as long as it comes with Middleman's adventures using fighting skills, "which range from WWF to Kung Fu," being used to rough-house with Mexican wrestlers in an Aztec pyramid, (which io9 brought you an exclusive first look at.)