Joss Whedon, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Cover Entertainment Weekly

This week's issue of Entertainment Weekly, due on newsstands Friday, features Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ABC's hotly-anticipated drama set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, on its cover. "This is basically a TV series of 'The Zeppo' [episode of Buffy], which was a very deliberate deconstruction of a Buffy episode in order to star the person who mattered the least," Whedon told the magazine about the series, which revolves around S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent and frequent MCU supporting player Phil Coulson (played by Clark Gregg). "The people who are ignored are the people I've been writing as my heroes from day one. There's a world of superheroes and superstars, they're celebrities, and that's a complicated world — particularly complicated for people who don't have the superpowers, the disenfranchised. Now obviously there's going to be hijinks and hilarity and sex and gadgets and all the things that made people buy the comics. But that's what the show really is about to me, and that's what Clark Gregg embodies: the Everyman." Expect other projects to be covered as well; while it's a shot from an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. photo session that makes the magazine cover, the article itself is a Q&A with Whedon--so it would be difficult to believe that everything from Doctor Horrible 2 to Avengers: Age of Ultron doesn't sneak into the conversation at some point.