‘The Tick’ is coming to Amazon a lot sooner than you might think, as the show is already airing its pilot episode on Amazon, with the life of the show soon to be decided afterwards based on the popularity of the first episode. To promote the new series, Amazon has released two clips, which to me, seems pretty indicative of the quality and humor the show is bringing this time around, as well as some pretty cool fight scenes.
Even though the Tick is still a more humorous hero, it is clear the show runners have worked hard to bring him into the more modern superhero medium, with darker stories, villains, and stakes. According to the creator of the Tick, Ben Edlund, the biggest challenge was bringing the Tick into a more realistic environment without losing the humorous tone. In his words while recently speaking to EW:
“It’s a tremendous balancing act because it had to have stakes, it had to have blood, it had to have certain things that are part of the living language of superheroes in the popular culture today. It has a responsibility if it wants to play in that pool to have life and death, to have a relationship to violence that none of the other iterations did. And so how do you have The Tick slip in a pool of blood and have it be funny? You have to find a very specific tone.”
Fortunately, Edlund is exceptionally pleased with the new man in the Tick costume, Peter Serafinowicz, as he had some large, Patrick Warburton-sized shoes to fill, and seems to have done so admirable. According to Edlund:
“His voice is The Tick’s voice — it’s what I hear in my head now. And to kind of have that take place when combating the very, very large shadow that is cast by Patrick Warburton and his way of characterizing this creature, that is a tremendous relief to feel like there is a new authoritative take on this character in live-action.”
Edlund also spoke on the importance of the Tick’s sidekick Arthur in the new show, and how Arthur in a way becomes the central character of the show:
“[Arthur] He’s the main character. He’s the one who has the arc. He’s the one who gives us the shoes you wear to pass through this universe. In the previous live-action, there really wasn’t the time taken to build what is usually a compelling main character story. So I mean The Tick is no less an important character than Arthur — he’s titular — but it was really important to take this human character seriously and give us a chance to really bond with him and be with him emotionally and then have him encounter the strangest entity in his universe.”
According to Executive Producer Barry Josephson while speaking to EW, this is finally the version of the show they always wanted to make, though he admits they do need a strong fan base and many viewers to make it all work:
“My dream of this version of The Tick was to be able to go back to Ben and get his original voice, and now that he’s such an evolved television writer, have him have the opportunity to make his version of The Tick.That’s what we both wanted out of this and we have that now…The fans are only a portion of an audience that we are going to need to maintain this. I think we can’t move forward without that dedicated core, but I think also the hope is that other people see it for what it is, which is a freestanding story that benefits from the history it has, but doesn’t rely on it.”
Check out the new, pretty amazing clips from ‘The Tick’ below, and then share your thoughts on the new version of the character in the comments below!
Nick is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, who belongs to the privileged few who enjoyed the ending to ‘Lost.’ For more of Nick’s thoughts and articles, follow him on Twitter (@starfro67)
