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The Tick The Complete Edlund
NEW ENGLAND COMICS (W/A) Ben Edlund (W) Benito Cereno (A) Les McClaine New Edition! All new 4th edition! New Story! Now includes an awesome brand-new 8-page story from current Tick All-Star creators Benito Cereno & Les McClaine! An all-new untold story which answers previously never-answered questions about mysterious events which befell The Tick in the original Edlund storyline! The The Complete Edlund New Edition collects all 12 issues of the classic Tick series written and drawn by creator Ben Edlund, along with commentary from Edlund, the first Tick story (originally published in the NEC Newsletter), rarely seen back-up stories, pin-ups, and a bonus Pseudo Tick #13 which provides a possible conclusion to Edlund's original storyline. 424 pages $37.95
- GenresComicsGraphic Novels
424 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2017
1 person is currently reading
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About the author
Ben Edlund
187 books36 followersIn 1988, Ben Edlund launched the comic book that would make his name known to many comic and cartoon fans across the nation. It was the tale of a 300 lb., 7ft tall big blue insect named "The Tick". It was a character that Ben created a few years before in high school. The original series, drawn and written by Ben and published by New England Comics, only lasted 12 issues, but became quite popular in the underground comic world. The creation of a 13th issue is something Ben still hasn't decided against, but he has become a busy man since.
In 1994, Ben worked with Fox Kids Network to bring The Tick (and Arthur) to the small screen in an animated series. The show was a pretty faithful interpretation of the quirky heroic characters introduced in the comic book. It became an underground hit with a cult following. The show lasted for 3 seasons but eventually succumbed to being marketed as a kids show. The humor was often targeted to an older audience and trying to cater the show to children just stifled its creativity.
Fox wanted something to sell happy meals and figures. The Tick did just that, for a time, but shows would come along that Fox saw as better suited to a child audience.
Comedy Central picked up syndication rights to the show and aired it for a while. There it picked up some more fans and its popularity continued to grow.
In 2000, Ben began working on the Tick's 3rd incarnation, a live action television show. With the support of Barry Sonnenfeld (Director of Addam's Family, Men in Black), and the talent of Patrick Warburton (best known as Putty from Seinfeld) as the embodiment of big blue justice, the show had much promise. After a delay of almost a year after the acceptance of the pilot, The Tick finally aired. However, a difficult timeslot, (against NBC's Must See TV and CBS's Survivor), preemption by Baseball, as well as little promotion by the Fox Network, and other reasons I won't get into here (though I could!) would have the show end after only 8 episodes. It was the second time Fox had mismanaged one of Ben's creations.
In fall of 2002, Ben was working as a producer and writer on the Joss Whedon created show Firefly. He and Joss had worked together before on the screenplay for Titan A.E. Firefly was an innovative, character-driven space western. Unfortunately, Firefly was cancelled after only an 11 episode run, including the pilot. The only episode penned by Ben that aired was Jaynestown. And yes, Firefly was also on the Fox Network, but we've blamed them enough today. Currently Ben is writing and producing for Angel.
In 1994, Ben worked with Fox Kids Network to bring The Tick (and Arthur) to the small screen in an animated series. The show was a pretty faithful interpretation of the quirky heroic characters introduced in the comic book. It became an underground hit with a cult following. The show lasted for 3 seasons but eventually succumbed to being marketed as a kids show. The humor was often targeted to an older audience and trying to cater the show to children just stifled its creativity.
Fox wanted something to sell happy meals and figures. The Tick did just that, for a time, but shows would come along that Fox saw as better suited to a child audience.
Comedy Central picked up syndication rights to the show and aired it for a while. There it picked up some more fans and its popularity continued to grow.
In 2000, Ben began working on the Tick's 3rd incarnation, a live action television show. With the support of Barry Sonnenfeld (Director of Addam's Family, Men in Black), and the talent of Patrick Warburton (best known as Putty from Seinfeld) as the embodiment of big blue justice, the show had much promise. After a delay of almost a year after the acceptance of the pilot, The Tick finally aired. However, a difficult timeslot, (against NBC's Must See TV and CBS's Survivor), preemption by Baseball, as well as little promotion by the Fox Network, and other reasons I won't get into here (though I could!) would have the show end after only 8 episodes. It was the second time Fox had mismanaged one of Ben's creations.
In fall of 2002, Ben was working as a producer and writer on the Joss Whedon created show Firefly. He and Joss had worked together before on the screenplay for Titan A.E. Firefly was an innovative, character-driven space western. Unfortunately, Firefly was cancelled after only an 11 episode run, including the pilot. The only episode penned by Ben that aired was Jaynestown. And yes, Firefly was also on the Fox Network, but we've blamed them enough today. Currently Ben is writing and producing for Angel.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 17, 2023
This bit of nostalgia hearkens back to the 90s when I could spend hours rewatching The Tick cartoons I'd recorded on a VHS tape, delighting in their complete inanity.
The collection revisited some of that nostalgia, but with it came a degree of sadness and pity for The Tick, because while his bumbling imperviousness and juvenile craving to be the hero remained entertaining, the root of it is somewhat disturbing. The Tick is deeply, deeply psychologically broken. There is little to go on in terms of back story, and much of it is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but hints that The Tick had a life before he found himself in an insane asylum dressed as The Tick.
On one occasion The Tick suffers a severe psychotic episode and flees wildly across the tops of buildings while the anthropomorphic skyscrapers lean in and mock his mental stability. I remember that particular scene as a kid and found it shocking and upsetting even then. I can remember staring at this image for a long time trying to find the humor in a mind-shattering loss of self confidence. While I was able to brush it away as soon as The Tick recovered and returned to his goofy self, that image is more persistent now.
The Tick lives in a world where all but a few heroes are undergoing some kind of identity crisis. Arthur begins dressing up in the moth outfit because he had lost his sense of purpose as an accountant. An absolutely obsessive and violent wealthy man dresses up as a tick, fights The Tick and loses, and as a result is comically and legally required to forfeit all of his tick-related gadgets to The Tick (who proceeds to break them in the process of discovery).
People are bored and their lives so uninteresting they become heroes. By the hundreds. So many, in fact, they gather at a club because they have nothing else to do. It's an idea that has been repeated more recently with One-punch Man, though in Saitama's world there's no shortage of adversaries and One-punch Man's humor is derived from the ease of his successes and the fact that he nevertheless remains frustratingly obscure, going unrecognized on his mundane grocery shopping trips, in spite of his accomplishments.
Both The Tick's The City and Saitama's Japan are full of weirdos with bizarre gimmicks that make them superheroes, though in Japan these superheroes have legitimate, if often unusual, powers. In both places the heroes are very earnest about using their powers for good, but the weirdos of The City seem to be contending with boredom, the implied impostorhood of their strange themes, and in some cases violent psychosis.
The City is amok with the mentally ill, and that takes some of the shine off the comic because it treats the problem as something to laugh at rather than pity or resolve. And I used to laugh at it. It used to be funny to think of someone as insane. But there were quite a few things I found funny that I would now consider a mark of a person devoid of empathy.
There's still plenty that's fun about The Tick. His interactions with the Superman-knock-off-in-disguise, Clark Oppenheimer, remain hilarious, and the frustration The Tick causes the "caped wonder" by insisting the hero be his sidekick, turning his car into an ashtray, and destroying his disguise by breaking his glasses (which Clark cleverly overcomes by shaping his fingers into glasses--which is even more comical because it works), are brilliantly and uproariously illustrated by Edlund, whose character expressions, perspectives, and off-kilter comic-book-sound-effects are top notch.
The text without the images, the palpable frustration and the scarcely contained rage of Clark, just don't do the scene justice.
Still, many of the things about The Tick that used to make me laugh, his tirades against evil, his hallmark cry before heading into battle (Spoon!), just make me sad, because I know there's something wrong with him, something broken, and the little bits of a person who want to make the world better that get out through that cracked shell make me see him as a character who cannot ever recover because he has lost himself in The Tick in order to protect whatever internal damage put him in the insane asylum to begin with.
It's possible I've read too much into Edlund's story. It's likely it's just meant to be a silly story about a man who is nigh invulnerable and looking to use this particular trait to make the world better and have fun doing it, while the see-saw of intelligence and bravado is tilted dramatically to one side. But there's also plenty of subtext I find impossible to ignore, and if I ignore the subtext then I'm falling into the same cage The Tick has willingly put himself into in order to avoid confronting it himself, and I can't decide if this is unhealthy or if this psychotic break is the best way to deal with the damage.
The collection revisited some of that nostalgia, but with it came a degree of sadness and pity for The Tick, because while his bumbling imperviousness and juvenile craving to be the hero remained entertaining, the root of it is somewhat disturbing. The Tick is deeply, deeply psychologically broken. There is little to go on in terms of back story, and much of it is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but hints that The Tick had a life before he found himself in an insane asylum dressed as The Tick.
On one occasion The Tick suffers a severe psychotic episode and flees wildly across the tops of buildings while the anthropomorphic skyscrapers lean in and mock his mental stability. I remember that particular scene as a kid and found it shocking and upsetting even then. I can remember staring at this image for a long time trying to find the humor in a mind-shattering loss of self confidence. While I was able to brush it away as soon as The Tick recovered and returned to his goofy self, that image is more persistent now.
The Tick lives in a world where all but a few heroes are undergoing some kind of identity crisis. Arthur begins dressing up in the moth outfit because he had lost his sense of purpose as an accountant. An absolutely obsessive and violent wealthy man dresses up as a tick, fights The Tick and loses, and as a result is comically and legally required to forfeit all of his tick-related gadgets to The Tick (who proceeds to break them in the process of discovery).
People are bored and their lives so uninteresting they become heroes. By the hundreds. So many, in fact, they gather at a club because they have nothing else to do. It's an idea that has been repeated more recently with One-punch Man, though in Saitama's world there's no shortage of adversaries and One-punch Man's humor is derived from the ease of his successes and the fact that he nevertheless remains frustratingly obscure, going unrecognized on his mundane grocery shopping trips, in spite of his accomplishments.
Both The Tick's The City and Saitama's Japan are full of weirdos with bizarre gimmicks that make them superheroes, though in Japan these superheroes have legitimate, if often unusual, powers. In both places the heroes are very earnest about using their powers for good, but the weirdos of The City seem to be contending with boredom, the implied impostorhood of their strange themes, and in some cases violent psychosis.
The City is amok with the mentally ill, and that takes some of the shine off the comic because it treats the problem as something to laugh at rather than pity or resolve. And I used to laugh at it. It used to be funny to think of someone as insane. But there were quite a few things I found funny that I would now consider a mark of a person devoid of empathy.
There's still plenty that's fun about The Tick. His interactions with the Superman-knock-off-in-disguise, Clark Oppenheimer, remain hilarious, and the frustration The Tick causes the "caped wonder" by insisting the hero be his sidekick, turning his car into an ashtray, and destroying his disguise by breaking his glasses (which Clark cleverly overcomes by shaping his fingers into glasses--which is even more comical because it works), are brilliantly and uproariously illustrated by Edlund, whose character expressions, perspectives, and off-kilter comic-book-sound-effects are top notch.
Clark: Aarrrggghh! I hate you!
Tick: This is good, Clark, You're getting out a lot of your aggression. How do you feel?
Clark: You're... you're just like Woody Woodpecker!
Tick: What?
Clark: Woody Woodpecker! Woody Woodpecker! The bird in the cartoons!
Tick: Oh.
Clark: He was so darned obnoxious! I wanted to reach into the TV and crush that little red-headed jerk's skull...
Tick: Clark, get a hold of yourself.
Clark: I always felt so sorry for the walrus. All he wanted to do was have a barbecue. But you... you're just like Woody. Obnoxious.
The text without the images, the palpable frustration and the scarcely contained rage of Clark, just don't do the scene justice.
Still, many of the things about The Tick that used to make me laugh, his tirades against evil, his hallmark cry before heading into battle (Spoon!), just make me sad, because I know there's something wrong with him, something broken, and the little bits of a person who want to make the world better that get out through that cracked shell make me see him as a character who cannot ever recover because he has lost himself in The Tick in order to protect whatever internal damage put him in the insane asylum to begin with.
It's possible I've read too much into Edlund's story. It's likely it's just meant to be a silly story about a man who is nigh invulnerable and looking to use this particular trait to make the world better and have fun doing it, while the see-saw of intelligence and bravado is tilted dramatically to one side. But there's also plenty of subtext I find impossible to ignore, and if I ignore the subtext then I'm falling into the same cage The Tick has willingly put himself into in order to avoid confronting it himself, and I can't decide if this is unhealthy or if this psychotic break is the best way to deal with the damage.
February 1, 2022
While I still like Marvel movies and TV shows, I don’t really read the comics anymore. A combination of too much money to spend on several volumes and the overly complicated reading orders have made me stop reading those and any kind of superhero comics.
However, an exception can be made for The Tick.
I first encountered The Tick via the live action FOX series, before later watching the first season of the Amazon reboot and some of the original animated series. However, I eventually decided to read the original source material, that being The Tick: The Complete Edlund via the fourth printing.
The Tick: The Complete Edlund contains all 12 issues of the original comic book series plus the bonus 13th issue that was published a long time after the original 1988-1992 run to give the series a conclusion, plus bonus stories and the first few Tick appearances.
The series focuses on a very strong superhero named…well, The Tick. The 13 main issues contained tell a very loosely connected story. After the first 5 issues, the story becomes more episodic up to the end. I found the comedy and art to be both very well done, and I laughed a lot while reading this hilarious superhero parody.
However, this book isn’t perfect. The pages can bleed through and it can be hard to read at times as a result, and the last 2 issues aren’t as good as the first 11 in my opinion. However, aside from those, The Tick: The Complete Edlund is an excellent graphic novel collection that honestly needs more attention.
9 out of 10.
However, an exception can be made for The Tick.
I first encountered The Tick via the live action FOX series, before later watching the first season of the Amazon reboot and some of the original animated series. However, I eventually decided to read the original source material, that being The Tick: The Complete Edlund via the fourth printing.
The Tick: The Complete Edlund contains all 12 issues of the original comic book series plus the bonus 13th issue that was published a long time after the original 1988-1992 run to give the series a conclusion, plus bonus stories and the first few Tick appearances.
The series focuses on a very strong superhero named…well, The Tick. The 13 main issues contained tell a very loosely connected story. After the first 5 issues, the story becomes more episodic up to the end. I found the comedy and art to be both very well done, and I laughed a lot while reading this hilarious superhero parody.
However, this book isn’t perfect. The pages can bleed through and it can be hard to read at times as a result, and the last 2 issues aren’t as good as the first 11 in my opinion. However, aside from those, The Tick: The Complete Edlund is an excellent graphic novel collection that honestly needs more attention.
9 out of 10.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews