Spoon man returns.
The Tick is one of three new comedy pilots Amazon is releasing on Friday, August 19th as part of their latest “pilot season.” The decision will be made down the line on whether it will be picked up as a full series or not.
Considering he’s still something of a cult character, The Tick has proven to be impressively durable, making his way through several iterations at this point. Now, 30 years after Ben Edlund created him as the mascot for his local comic book store (before branching him off into his own comic), the goofy superhero is back in a new live-action adaptation from Amazon.
Also of note here is that Edlund has been the primary guiding force behind The Tick the entire time, including the Saturday morning animated series in the 1990s -- which introduced the character to a wider audience -- and the short-lived FOX live-action series from 2001. Returning to the character after writing for several TV series (including Firefly, Angel, Gotham and several seasons on Supernatural, where he brought his quirky wit to some of the show’s most memorable episodes), Edlund has given The Tick his biggest overhaul to date.
First and foremost, the true protagonist here, at least in the pilot episode, is Arthur (Griffin Newman), introduced as a mild mannered guy obsessed with the supposedly dead supervillain, The Terror (Jackie Earle Haley, seen in flashbacks, and just as wonderfully freaky as you’d want). Arthur’s investigations into his city’s criminal underworld lead him to encounter the Tick himself (Peter Serafinowicz), but even so, the Tick is only in a handful of scenes, while Arthur’s story truly drives the plot.
Edlund himself is not the only one returning from the 2001 live-action series, with Barry Sonnenfeld and Barry Josephson again serving as executive producers and Patrick Warburton, who played the Tick 15 years ago, as a producer. But as Josephson indicated in interviews, this take on The Tick is notably darker than any that have come before. It’s still a comedy, to be sure, but one tinged with black humor and existing in a world with some very real violence and consequences – something akin to Kick-Ass, but with more outlandish superpowers on display. This is definitely not as kid-friendly as The Tick was in the past, with the pilot including a funny joke about “weaponized syphilis” and some cursing that you never would have heard in previous versions.
The intent here is to adapt The Tick to the times – to use his comedic skew on a superhero to better reflect our current superheroes and their more realistic (and often dark) worlds. And for the most part, it works! This starts with both The Tick and Arthur, both of whom appear to be a bit, well… damaged.
Thanks to a childhood trauma, Arthur’s had some big mental issues for most of his life, which we get glimpses of both via flashback and conversations between Arthur and others, including his sister, Dot (Valerie Curry). It’s an interesting and surprisingly engaging way to go, making this feel like it’s almost Mr. Robot meets The Tick.
As for The Tick, he’s just as boisterous, brash and ready to fight evil as ever, but the work by Serafinowicz -- always a very funny and clever, go for broke performer -- offers an intriguing take on the blue-garbed superhero, which also highlights that this guy is off. He’s funny, to be sure, but we also truly see a bit of insanity in there - and hey, Edlund’s original comic mentioned the Tick having escaped from an institution, so this is just an expansion of that, purists!
Edlund wrote the script for the pilot, which is directed by Wally Pfister, Christopher Nolan’s longtime cinematographer (including on all the Dark Knight movies). Hiring Pfister makes sense – his work on the very sort of dark, psychological comic book adaptations The Tick is now doing a comedic skew on make him right at home, bringing the appropriate “lived-in” quality for this version of The Tick and his city.
On the down side, there are some lulls in the pilot and times where the energy lags and a few more jokes would have been appreciated at times. It's also difficult to know how well Arthur will work as the center of the show -- should he remain in that position -- given we only get a glimpse at what it like be like to see him take on his more traditional superhero persona in the 30-minute pilot. Newman is good in the role, but even with this different dynamic, you still want to see The Tick and Arthur teaming up to fight supervillains, which hopefully future episodes would be able to give us more of.
Oh, and for those complaining about the costume in the first photos released, it looked fine to me in the show itself and fits in with the vibe of this version and who this Tick is, amusingly off-kilter vibe and all.
The Verdict
A darker version of The Tick sounds weird, but what is The Tick if not weird? Ben Edlund deciding to use his superhero parody to better reflect modern superheroes (and more importantly perhaps, modern superhero TV Shows and films) makes a lot of sense, and this Tick is one that definitely works best when viewed next to the recent DC Comics movies or Marvel’s Netflix shows, with their dark, tortured versions of comic book characters. It’s not as hysterically funny as previous Tick stories, but the humor is still present (including at least one great line taken verbatim from The Tick’s past). Suffice to say, I would like to see where The Tick goes and hope it makes it past Amazon’s pilot stage.
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