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Rating:  -
The live action tv series did its best to capture the essence of the Tick. But the concept truely blossomed in animated form, closer to its comic book origins. So release the cartoon in DVD season sets already !!!!!!!
Rating:  -
Superheroes are becoming big movie stars these days like Spider-man and the X-men. They are getting the big-time treatment and it's generally being done well. But superhero movies have to gloss over the silly conventions of superheroes a bit. They still have the weird costumes, death rays, and over-the-top villains, but they are tweaked just a bit or "updated" so contemporary audiences won't snicker too much.
The Tick, on the other hand, fully embraces the silliness of the superhero life. You're supposed to snicker, and I did. In particular, it thumbs its nose at the stoic heroes of DC comics. The DC heroes, which include Superman and Batman, are career superheroes. That is, their lives are ABOUT being superheroes and their civilian identities are just convenient disguises.
Well, in the world of the Tick, the heroes are so career minded they usually don't even HAVE secret identities. The heroes wear their costumes, complete with antennae or "bunny ears," even while sitting in a booth at a coffee shop or going out on a date. And unlike the DC heroes, they just can't afford a cool headquarters or fortress of solitude. This often puts them in compromising positions. Like when Arthur (David Burke) visits his family in his moth costume and they commit him to a mental institution, or when Captain Liberty (Liz Vassey) tries to stop some naughty photos of herself from being published so she won't get court-martialed. Or when Bat-Manuel (Nestor Carbonell) hires a publicist to boost his reputation and instead gets published as the "laugh-of-the-day" photo.
The Tick himself is a dim-witted lug of a hero. He lives to fight crime, but try explaining why his sidekick Arthur wants to go out on a date instead of fight crime and he just won't get it. As played by Patrick Warburton (`Putty' from Seinfeld) The Tick is a likable muscle-head just doing what he loves, busting criminal's heads together. It's really funny to see this clueless wonder try and help his friends adjust to the ups and downs of superhero life between super-battles. In fact the show is primarily about those moments. You never get to see the battle with Apocalypse-Cow (the mere mention of it is funny enough)so they can concentrate more on the silliness of these characters trying to adjust to their peculiar "lifestyle."
Much of the show's charm comes from its observation that people inevitably make themselves look silly in the pursuit of their dreams. Are they ultimately doing good in that pursuit? For the most part. They manage to save Jimmy Carter from a communist robot from the seventies but they scare him half out of his mind in the process. More importantly, it's funny to watch.
I must admit I have a weakness for old-fashioned superheroes, both serious and silly, and this fondness for the superhero genre does boost my appreciation of The Tick. Society sometimes prefers the anti-heroes (Dirty Harry, The Terminator, etc.), with selfish motives who indiscriminately blow the bad guys away. But I've always loved the idealism of the good guys like Spider-man and Superman whether it's played for laughs or drama. The Tick affectionately ridicules these kinds of heroes and it does it very well. I gladly snatched up this dvd set when I saw it. Well worth it.
Rating:  -
The Tick was a live action television series that aired during the fall of 2001 on FOX. The show was based on writer Brian Edlund's irreverent and often brightly brilliant 1990s comic book and cartoon series of the same name. The premise of the franchise is simple: it serves as an exploration into the daily lives of superheroes. Like Seinfeld before it, the strength of The Tick stood in its ability to inject the surreal into the lives of its characters by ensuring that they are all well-grounded in a realistic, believable setting. The cartoon itself spanned thirty-six half hour episodes and ran for three seasons from 1994-97 (and is sadly not yet available on DVD). The live action series wasn't as long lived, seeing the production of only nine half hour episodes, of which only seven were ever aired by FOX.
Like so many shows before it (Twin Peaks, Nowhere Man, Firefly and Maximum Bob), The Tick suffered the fate of cancellation simply because it was too good for tv. The uniqueness of shows like The Tick lay in their ability to consistently deliver a compellingly original storytelling experience for its viewers. But it was this very uniqueness that made these shows the ugly ducklings of their day - scary on the outside for the networks who had to market them, but hiding a hidden treasure trove of situational goodness on the inside for the viewers fortunate enough to find them.
Overall, the different incarnations of The Tick are appealing because of their keen, shoot from the hip, suave mentality. It takes the idea of the traditional superhero mythos and literally turns it on its head with hilarious results. This 2-disc DVD brings this live action series back to life, with a myriad of fascinating extras, from behind the scenes interviews to episode commentaries by the writers and producers of the show, making it a must have for any DVD collection.
Rating: -
I'm feeling blue. Where, oh, where is the justice? Ain't no justice. Not BLUE JUSTICE. Real Tick fans from Edlund's black & white ishes early on can relate, n'est-ce pas? The Warburton show started weak and finished strong, from a writing POV, dumbed-down versions of Die Fledermaus & American Maid notwithstanding. But it was ill-promoted. and we are left without Chairface Chippendale, Barry Hubris & the best rogue's gallery of goofball highbrow villainy ever to grace the cathode ray set. Left without TV's first celebrity capybara. Left without the answer to what would happen if Captain Mucilage fought Mucus Tick? Left without that groovy theme song, BA-DAH-BOW! And left without a Townsend Coleman fix...fella! So he sez to me, he sez "you got style baby, but if you gonna be a real DVD bestseller instead of one what bombs at Christmas, you gotta dish the REAL goods, man." I mean...Murdoch, do you, like, read, man?
Rating: -
Seriously, why would they release the live action show but not the animated series. The live action series pales in comparison the animated series.
Fox executives, listen up, release the animated DVD if you want to see signficant sales. I would also recommend running re-runs of the old series on prime time to advertise the animated series. It was probabaly one of the funniest cartoons of all time. However this was more of an adult cartoon and would have done better in prime time than Saturday morning.
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