Fans of the wacky comic book adaptation The Tick have been waiting on more news from the Amazon reboot of the series. Now, we finally have a look at the new version of the nutty big blue hero. See what you think.
This first look at at actor Peter Serafinowicz as The Tick comes to us courtesy of Comic Book Resources, and it gives us a pretty complete look at what we'll get when we tune in to the new version of the TV show. As you can see, this version of his superhero costume is a lighter blue than the one we were treated to in the 2001 iteration of the show, when actor Patrick Warburton brought the role to life on FOX. As is the tradition nowadays in the world of comic to film and TV adaptations, this Tick suit looks a lot more like armor than the past version of the costume. Along with the standard accentuated bits of musculature, we also have an overall texture that was absent on Warburton's suit, making it seem a little more otherworldly than it used to.
Not that The Tick needs to seem otherworldly. Even though one of his superhero cohorts in the show, Batmanuel, did suggest at one point that The Tick was from outer space, there's no real evidence to suggest that he actually is an alien. Of course, there's really no way for us to know either way, since the character has no memory of his life before taking on the mantle of The Tick, so he could be an alien. He could also just be crazy, though, since we do know that he has recently escaped from a mental institution in the comics, which is (oddly enough) one of the things that makes this character so damn lovable.
The official synopsis for the show notes that, in this world, superheroes have been a fact of life for decades. A superpower-less accountant named Arthur (Griffin Newman) will discover that his city is actually owned by a supervillain who's been thought dead for a long time, and will fall in with The Tick as he tries to uncover the conspiracy.
The Tick is a bit of an underground pop culture phenomenon, going back to the beginning of the character as a mascot for a comic book store in 1986, with a black and white comic book series first being released in 1988. The slightly goofy, parody-filled superhero story lent itself to small screen adaptation, and the first iteration of that was a Saturday morning cartoon that aired for three seasons on FOX, starting in 1994. That show, and the subsequent live action version, were both overseen by Ben Edlund, who created and wrote the comic book series. Edlund is on board as writer and executive producer of the Amazon pilot.
You can watch The Tick as part of Amazon's 2016 comedy pilot season on August 19.
