The Tick to be Cancelled

mr.buddylee writes "This is a short write up, but evidently The Tick is going to be cancelled. " There really isn't much there to read except the notice. I'll keep watching until the last episode airs on Jan 24. I enjoyed it even if it was put in a terrifying time slot guaranteeing that nobody saw it. I think if it had a full season to find a footing it would have been a real winner. Ah well, good luck to Ben and his future projects.

Comments

A Sad Day for the Turd Nibblers

[Anonymous Coward]

LInux sucks d00d.

WinXP forever!!

Re:The Simpsons?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Simpsons was a runaway hit from the very beginning, it only took a handful of episodes for it to catch on. Plus, Fox was only in its second or third season as a network at the time, even a moderate hit would have been a pretty big deal to them at the time, and The Simpsons was much more than that. It's quite possibly the only reason Fox still exists as a network today.

The commentary on The Simpsons season 1 DVDs explains some of that history, especially how ripoffs of simpsons merchandise started appearing even before the end of the first season.

And I gotta say, I saw The Tick's pilot a long time before the series actually debuted, and loved it. But aside from the pilot, the show itself has been a big letdown. Though I held out hope it would get better, I'm not at all surprised it's being cancelled. It just wasn't that funny. Maybe someone'll give Mr. Edlund another cartoon instead. Whether it was the Tick or something else, I'd watch it.

link to an interview with Patrick Warburton

[blonde rser]

here is an interview with the tick himself on npr's freshair. talks about the show among other things... interview is pre-cancelation however

Re:Jeez Louise, Man - Where's the Villainy?

[Golias]

Villains, you say? I think your memory of the book might be a little colored. The fact is that the book seldom focused on fighting villians at all! Let's review, shall we? (spoiler warning)

Issue 1: The Tick jumps around buildings, meets some ninjas (but does not bother to fight them much, as they clearly pose no threat to him whatsoever), sits in a diner and argues with a waiter about being a tick, passes out and wakes up in a subway tunnel, is rescued by "Clark", a badly disguised superhero.

Issue 2: Tick spends the entire issue trying to become Clark's friend, mostly pissing him off.

Issue 3: The Tick actually fights some Ninjas, but 90% of the book is dialogue between Tick and Oedipus, or funny dialogue among the ninjas.

Issue 4: More ninjas, but mostly time spent getting to know Arthur and Paul The Samurai.

Issue 5: Ninja story resolved.

Issue 6: Tick fights The Red Scare, who is not, in fact, a real villain, but an actor hired to pretend he is a villain. A lot of the focus is really on building the relationship between Arthur and Tick. ("You're not... funny, are you?")

Issue 7: Chairface.

That's right, folks, it took 7 issues (of a comic that only ran for 12) before the first major villain was actually introduced.

And then from there... Issue 8 Tick and Arthur argue with Arthur's sister, and decide to leave the City.

Issue 9 is a road trip story.

Issue 10 is more road trippin'

Issue 11, Tick and Arthur coping with New York superhero culture.

Issue 12, Tick moves into his new home.

The truth is that The Tick live-action show, with all of the time spend hanging around exchanging funny dialogue, was much closer in pace and tone to the original than the cartoon was. The cartoon could not really spend time pondering stuff like the sexuality of superheroes (which the book did A LOT, although in more subtle ways that the recent show did). Most of the fights in the comic were over in one or two panels, as the Tick was so absurdly hard for anybody to seriously hurt.

Re:Good riddance

[RoninM]

It's Bob Einstein, actually.

Re:Jeez Louise, Man - Where's the Villainy?

[coljac]

OK, perhaps a comparison to the cartoon is more relevant.

Episode 1: The Idea Men
2: Chairface
3: Dinosaur Neil
4: Mr Mental
5: The BreadMaster
6: El Seed
... and so on.

Practically every episode had a humorous villain, which gave every episode focus but made the general "life" problems more funny because of the disconnect between supervillainy and trying to fix the microwave, etc.