Ben Edlund initially created his superhero character the Tick as a mascot for a comic book store chain in 1986. The Tick is a tall, muscular dude with a tiny tick-like antennae, extraordinary strength, and an all-blue costume. He’s also seemingly indestructible, which is a handy super-ability to have when you’re as whimsically clownish at the Tick. A satire of other superheroes, naturally, the Tick lives in a swirling, bizarre, MAD Magazine-like universe where he fights villains such as the Man-Eating Cow, the Chairface Chippendale, and, uh, The Fuzzy Person. He has a sidekick who is only known as Arthur and flies around in a moth suit.
“The Tick” was adapted into a whimsical and amazing animated series that premiered in 1994, with Townsend Coleman voicing the character. Arthur, meanwhile, was initially played by Micky Dolenz, but he was replaced by Rob Paulsen in the second season. The animated show came at the right time, bringing a welcome dose of surreality to the superhero media landscape. Then, in 2001, “The Tick” was adapted for TV again, this time as a live-action, 30-minute sitcom starring Patrick Warburton as the big blue guy and David Burke as Arthur. But where the animated series lasted for 36 episodes, the live-action sitcom only ran for nine.
Undeterred, however, the Tick muscled his way back onto the small screen in a new, bigger-budget series produced by Warburton. Led by Peter Serafinowicz as the Tick and Griffin Newman as Arthur, the series was whimsical and frequently funny yet featured more serious narrative wrinkles. It only ran on Prime Video for two seasons from 2017-2019 (after its pilot debuted in 2016), but it’s may yet gain the extended, second life it deserves now that it’s streaming on Netflix.
The second live-action TV adaptation of The Tick is quite good
The quality of an adaptation of “The Tick” is going to hinge on the performance of its lead, and all three TV versions of “The Tick” so far have captured vital parts of the big blue man. Townsend Coleman perfectly captured the Tick’s blustery cluelessness and his endless childlike enthusiasm for superhero stuff. Patrick Warburton, by comparison, captured the character’s feckless confidence and jock-like half-perception of the world, whereas Peter Serafinowicz was more of a proper weirdo who saw danger and happily stormed forward. I leave it to you to decide who was the best Tick.
Prime Video’s “The Tick” took a more conventional storytelling tack by folding in back stories and longer-form plots, which, if I may be critical, undercut its namesake’s baseline absurdity. The series begins with Arthur, operating on his own, investigating the potentially faked death of a supervillain named the Terror (Jackie Earle Haley). The Terror killed Athur’s father when he was young, so Arthur is itching for retribution. While probing around his home city (called simply The City), Arthur runs into the Tick, who’s also on the Terror’s trail. In the pilot episode, Arthur thinks the Tick might even be a figment of his imagination. It’s not until his sister Dot (Valorie Curry, who would later star in another mix of superhero action and satire as Firecracker on “The Boys”) sees the Tick that the ambiguity is dropped.
In keeping with modern TV trends, Prime Video’s “The Tick” is serialized, not episodic, and follows a longer, larger story about the Terror, Arthur, and a villain known as Overkill (Scott Speiser). Again, this serialized story is exciting and compelling, but it doesn’t permit quite the same degree of absurdism as previous “Tick” TV adaptation.
Superheroes need heroes like the Tick
There is also a Surf Dracula contingent to Prime Video’s “The Tick.” Arthur doesn’t quit his job to be a superhero full-time until the start of the second season, and it takes too long for the series to get to that status quo. From there, “The Tick” Season 2 incorporates its universe’s secret service A.E.G.I.S. and colorful characters with names like Tyrannosaurus Rathbone (Marc Kudisch) and Lobstercules (played physically by Niko Nedyalkov and voiced by Liz Vassey). Even so, the silliness is tempered by more realistic violence.
But where many superheroes have come to be taken more seriously, The Tick and Arthur are absurd from the ground up and wear their absurdity on their sleeves. In the animated “Tick” TV series, for example, the Tick decides he needs a battle cry and feels that the syllable “Spoon!” will do. The Tick, in every TV show featuring the character, is likewise interrogated about how being a large, violent buffoon connects him to being a tick (the superficial similarities in his costume’s appearance aside). After all, he’s not a blood-sucking arachnid (in either a literal or even figurative sense), and he does nothing the least bit tick-like.
Prime Video’s “The Tick” got rather good reviews and holds a 95% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes as a whole. It was praised for being full of bombast and energy, and many critics loved Peter Serafinowicz in the titular role. Sure, it doesn’t go to the same comically gross extremes as a show like “The Boys,” but its balance of absurdity and modern superhero storytelling is something to be admired. You can fire it up on Netflix, and see for yourself.
