Patton Oswalt coming to 'SHIELD,' praises show

Actor, comedian and online fan-fav Patton Oswalt is coming to Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD.

The Ratatouille and Justified actor will appear in an upcoming episode of the ABC series as Agent Eric Koenig. The character was part of Nick Fury’s team of World War II soldiers in the original Marvel comics.

“I got a call from my agent saying they want you on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and I said ‘Hell, yes,’” Oswalt said. “I’m lucky that I’m visible enough that they wanted to bring me in to play this character. I’d worked with [executive producer Joss Whedon] before on Dollhouse, and I guess I wasn’t too annoying and they decided to put me on another one of his shows. So I was very lucky.”

The actor also praised the ABC drama, which has struggled lately with diminishing ratings.

“[They’re] a scrappy bunch of agents who are sort of working on the lower tier levels of the Marvel Universe and trying to stop threats before they even get to the Avengers-level threats. It’s almost like when you watch The Wire, and the guys like Pryzbylewski are just chasing the paper trail but that’s kind of the whole case. That’s where they can bring these guys down, is they’re doing the kind of brutal grunt work. There are these people doing the day to day that keeps the world from spinning into chaos. [They say,] ‘no, we don’t have the shiny Tony Stark, Hawkeye, Black Widow stuff, but we are in it up to our necks and we’re doing it. I really like that. There’s a great sense of camaraderie … They introduced Agent Garrett, who’s one of my favorite Marvel characters, and I kept asking them on the set, ‘is he going to be an android [like in the comics]. They’re just like, ‘You’ll have to wait and see.'”