If you are one of the (unfortunately few) people who enjoyed the short-lived 2001 FOX series The Tick, you were, no doubt, excited to hear that Amazon was on board for a new live-action pilot of the show, which would hopefully go to series before long. Well, according to Ben Edlund, creator of The Tick comic who is also writing and executive producing the pilot, the new show will be able to fill a very specific need in today’s saturated superhero market.
We’ve got this show about superheroes [where] we get to have fun with the idea of superheroes by starting with kind of a comedic parody of [an] event-oriented-like universe. It will be darker and more grounded. And it’s going to have a real story, a real hero’s myth. We’re the ones that get to have fun with it and that’s kind of the situation where right now that’s an open field in this area of entertainment.
Ben Edlund relayed his thoughts on how Amazon’s new version of The Tick can fit into the current superhero pantheon to Entertainment Weekly, and it’s obvious the creator has a very clear plan for the rebooted series. These plans will probably, from the sound of it, have Ben Edlund and crew expanding on The Tick by adding some more dark comedy elements and a story that will probably make full use of the idea that our hero is also an escaped mental patient with no known past to speak of.
The Tick television show was based on Ben Edlund’s 1980s and 1990s comic book title of the same name. Originally created as a mascot for the comic book store where Edlund was a customer, its popularity led to him expanding the character and creating full adventures for him. Unlike most superheroes, The Tick isn’t really an alter ego, since the man who became The Tick has no memory of his life, or much of anything, before becoming a superhero. He’s actually legally insane and has recently escaped from a mental institution when we first meet him. Due to his memory issues, the 7-foot-tall, muscle bound blue hero with antennae is very childlike, good-hearted and silly, and sees everything around him as a wonder to behold.
The comic was created as a surreal parody of superheroes, and that tradition was continued with both the 1994-1996 animated show (also on FOX) and the 2001 live-action show that starred Patrick Warburton (Seinfeld) as the titular hero. Both shows added greatly to the cult following of the character, and it looks like the seeds those shows planted will be allowed to grow even more in Amazon’s version.
I know many of you cannot wait to set your eyeballs on this new iteration of The Tick, so here’s hoping that the pilot makes it to series and we all get to yell “SPOOOOOOOOON!” before too long.
