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

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.