Well are you, chum? Honestly, I didn’t think I was, but Amazon’s new reboot of The Tick won me over by the end of the pilot. When I saw the images of Peter Serafinowicz in the suit I was apprehensive. I loved the original live-action version of The Tick, because in addition to Patrick Warburton being seemingly cosmically ordained to play the role, David Burke (Arthur), Nestor Carbonell (Batmanuel), and Liz Vassey (Captain Liberty) were also perfect, and director Barry Sonnenfeld managed to create fully-realized world around the characters. It was distinct from the comic and cartoon, but just as funny. But that first shot of Serafinowicz? The suit looked weird. It looked like a suit. I had visions of uncanny valleys dancing in my head.
I’m happy to say that, at least in the opening episode, The Tick makes the suit work. And it makes everything about the show work by embracing and then oh-so-gently mocking the current gritty superhero landscape.
We only actually get a few minutes of the Tick in the pilot, because what we focus on instead is Arthur’s Tragic Backstory. Really. (Stay with me.) First, we get a wonderful nod to Watchmen as we see the first superhero, Superian, arrive on earth. Obviously this ushers in a new era of humanity, yada yada yada, and we jump to present day, and get acquainted with our new Arthur. He’s a young man who is still reeling from an incident in his childhood, which I won’t describe because spoilers, but believe me, it’s horrific. (Also, if you’re a sick bastard like myself, incredibly funny.) This incident left him with an obsession with The Terror, a supervillain whom most people believe was vanquished by Superian… but Arthur suspects otherwise. For most of the episode, though, the show keeps us with civilians—Arthur’s relationship with his sister, Dot, and his past issues with hallucinations and PTSD are in the foreground. In the background, there is definitely a criminal network up to no good – but is it The Terror? Or simply humans? Did I mention that The Terror is played by Jackie Earle Freaking Haley, and is legitimately terrifying?
Ben Edlund has liberally sprinkled quotes from older versions of The Tick across this new, bleaker landscape, which makes for a jarring experience in the moment, but the more I think about it, the more it seems the show is mounting an impressive commentary on our current superheroic climate. When The Tick comic first premiered back in 1986, comics were not yet part of mainstream culture; while devout comics fans were learning about the new, more mature landscape drawn by The Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Sandman, and Preacher, most people thought of comics and superheroes in terms of Christopher Reeve’s Superman and Adam West’s Batman.
The Tick was big, blue, and silly, and the foes he faced were usually ridiculous. In much the same way that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles parodied Daredevil (the Foot Clan = The Hand; Splinter = Stick), The Tick referenced Frank Miller’s run on Elektra, as the nigh-invulnerable hero helped a character named Oedipus battle an American ninja clan called, um, The Ninjas in America (presumably because Eastman and Laird had already used The Foot). When the Tick followed the Turtles again by getting his own cartoon, Ben Edlund and his writers doubled down on the silliness, giving us villains including The Deadly Nose (he has a gun for a nose), Chairface Chippendale (he has a chair for a head), and The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight (what it says on the tin).
The original live-action version took the character in a slightly darker dimension, reflecting a world that had embraced Tim Burton’s vision of Batman, only to be rewarded with Joel Schumacher’s vision of Batman. The Tick deals with death for the first time, apparently not understanding before that it was, y’know, permanent. Batmanuel and Captain Liberty have a way more complicated relationship than Die Fledermaus and American Maid ever did. Arthur’s sister Dot has him committed to a mental institution run by a nefarious Dave Foley. Jimmy Carter is threatened. It’s pretty dark stuff! But the Tick himself is still warm, friendly, and swathed in a cartoony blue suit that might be an organic part of his body. The criminals are all goofy enough, and violence cartoony enough, that it all feels fun.
But here in 2016 the darkness has gotten so thick that you wonder if even the Tick can punch through it. I mean, Dot is nagging Arthur about taking his pills? Real villains use real guns that are loaded with real bullets? But when The Tick and Arthur finally meet, suddenly the language changes. Tick makes ridiculous pronouncements about destiny, calls Arthur “chum”, and reenacts the scene from the original live-action series where Tick (naturally) assumes that one of Arthur’s lamps must be a lever for a secret passageway or hidden supercomputer, thus wrecking all of his new sidekick’s stuff. This lighthearted comedy crashes right into a show that was reaching Mr Robot-levels of sadness and paranoia only a scene before.
I think it’s fascinating that each new version of the character has grappled with the superhero landscape of the day—now we’ll have a Blue Avenger ready to tackle a world that has not only lived through the blimp scene in Watchmen, the back-breaking scene in The Dark Knight Rises, and the electroshock scene in Suicide Squad, but also binged Daredevil and Jessica Jones and Arrow and Flash and Legends of Tomorrow and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D…. if anyone can make superheroes fun again, it’s the Tick, and in Amazon’s version, I think we may have gotten the hero we both need and deserve.
You better like the cut of Leah Schnelbach‘s jib, cause it’s the only jib she’s got, baby! Come talk to her on Twitter!
Not to be crude but does EVERY M***********G THING have to be grimdark now? The Tick was always silly, and the various incarnations supported that. Now we have a Tick who might be mentally ill, an Arthur who IS mentally ill (and might just be manifesting the Tick as part of that), and absolutely sadistic superhero violence in the service of…what? “Fun”?
I know, I know. Get off my lawn.
Too bad I’ll never get to watch this because streaming services that aren’t Netflix all seem to hate Canada.
I wish that Amazon would just license their shows to Netflix Canada so I can watch their shows.
It’s different from what we’ve seen of the Tick on TV before, but on the other hand, this is the most creative control that Ben Edlund has ever had over a TV series about his creation. The animated series was great fun for the most part, but necessarily toned down for kids. The live-action series was frustratingly inconsistent — the episodes written by Edlund were good because they actually used superhero/comics tropes as the basis for the plot and humor (and the one by animated series co-writer Richard Leibmann-Smith was okay too), but the rest of the writers had mostly standard sitcom experience and the producers were Seinfeld veterans, so the majority of the time it had virtually no superheroics at all and was just warmed-over Seinfeld plots about four sex-obsessed losers having conversations, except that they happened to be doing it in superhero costumes. Now, finally, Edlund has free rein to bring his character to TV the way he wants. So, yes, it’s different from what we’ve seen before, but that’s because the creator of the series is evolving his premise in response to the times, not because someone else is misinterpreting it. So I’m open-minded about the new approach.
I have mixed feelings about Serafinowicz and the costume. His voice performance is good, but his expressions and body language are a little weak — maybe he just needs to get used to the suit, or they need to tweak it to give him more head movement. I also think his chin isn’t strong enough for the character — they should add a padded chin piece to the cowl, like Warburton’s had. (I do like it that the eyes are masked, though. I thought it was weird the way Warburton’s costume exposed his whole face, chin aside.)
I’m amazed they can get away with a Superman pastiche character whose name is literally just one letter off from “Superman.” Although, as you say, Superian seems to owe as much to Dr. Manhattan as to Kal-El. (I wonder if his civilian name is Clark Oppenheimer…)
Arthur was great as a former office drone in a moth suit. He didn’t need a backstory at all, much less a tragic one.
Also, I doubt they will but the pilot was written in a way that they could Fight Club this (Arthur’s off his meds, he’s asleep while the Tick attacks the bad guys and gets the suit, etc).
And if I ever get a genie with three wishes, then wish number one is that that is what we are going back to (look, wish number two is lasting world peace okay).
Frankly I don’t mind if we go back to comics to most people being those untranslated Asterix graphic novels from junior high French language class if I’m honest.
Not sure I buy the narrative arc in this review, where the successive versions of the Tick become increasingly darker. The source material had lots of dark elements and comic horror–the murderous insanity of Barry, the heroic but vicious Man-Eating Cow, Johnny Wingless, etc. The Fox cartoon didn’t include a lot of that, being a Saturday morning cartoon. But it was not really the original version of the Tick.
I really don’t see how this version of the suit looks more like a suit than the original one.
Are you not watching Supergirl? :)
The Tick was silly fun. He didn’t carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Although he might have tried in one episode. I can’t quite remember. If Deadpool taught us something, it was that superhero shows can still be filled with peril and overflowing with outrageous humor and ridiculous fun. It sounds like this new iteration of The Tick could learn from that. And on that note… SPOOOOOOOOOON!
@8/Sigmund: I think that’s exactly where the show may be going, actually. It starts out with this complex, “gritty” narrative of the sort that’s common in modern superhero fiction, and then the Tick shows up and he’s the same simple, upbeat, over-the-top guy he’s always been, telling Arthur to stop letting his fears weigh him down and just be a hero. I think the intent is to play the Tick’s goofiness off of the more “grounded” and dark landscape we’ve grown accustomed to.
Full disclosure here: I started following The Tick at Issue 6, when one of my friends told me about it, and I’m Mystic Order of Arachnid Vigilance Cog # 326. I have a friend who’s sister was dating a guy who was supposed to be the inker for issue 8, but who flaked on it. In my baby sister’s sixth grade photos, she’s wearing a Tick shirt, which she stole from me even though she’s five years younger and was basically swimming in it, because she forgot it was picture day.
So, y’know, this stuff is close to my heart.
And I like this one.
Every incarnation of THE TICK has been in conversation with, and a parody of, whatever the dominant version of superheroes is at that moment, And right now, it’s in conversation with Netflix’s DAREDEVIL, JESSICA JONES, and probably their upcoming LUKE CAGE, THE PUNISHER, and I’ll be shocked if there’s not an ELEKTRA, too. This is coming off of, and parodying, those.
This version of THE TICK is as different from the earlier versions as the Netflix superheroes are from BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, or the Schumacher Batman movies, and are more similar to the original comics, because the original comics were reflecting the Daredevil and Punisher comics of the time, which the Netflix series also is reflecting.
THE TICK has always been a parody of the superheroes right then. And yet, it’s still recognizably the Tick. As such, this seems entirely appropriate to me.
#2 – This is free to view for everyone as part of Amazon’s pilot season. You should be able to view it worldwide on your local version of Amazon, or not just VPN it (you don’t need an Amazon Prime account, for example). I can watch it fine from the UK.
The notion that the Tick is a manifestation of Arthur’s mind I don’t think flies: the bad guys call him a big blue guy (which Arthur isn’t) and Arthur doesn’t have the knowledge to create a bulletproof suit. It’s possible that later on we’ll find out that Arthur is somehow manifesting the Tick physically due to a superpower or something, but the Tick is certainly really there.
You also can’t sustain the Fight Club thing over a whole TV show. A two-hour movie, sure, but over thirteen episodes a year, every year? Not really doable.
I’ve never read the Comics, I’m vaguely familiar with the Animated Series, and I know of the existence of the Live Action Series, so I came into this pilot with relatively fresh eyes, and I loved it, though I couldn’t really tell you why.